ravdaniel's podcast: Recent Episodes
Rav Daniel Kohn
Follow the audio teachings and music of Rav Daniel Kohn. Over the past 25 years, as a Rabbi, Rosh Yeshiva and spiritual guide, he has taught thousands of students, uniquely combining the world of Torah learning, Jewish mysticism and deep psychological insight, and has culled and developed effective techniques for personal and spiritual renewal. [perhaps put this as a "read more" tab] Rav Daniel’s own spiritual path took him from university studies to many years of yeshiva learning with some of Israel’s greatest rabbis and to ordination by the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and Rav Zalman Nechmia Goldberg sh’litah and the "crown of wisdom" approbation from Rav Avraham Farbshtien z”l, the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chevron in Jerusalem. Deeply rooted in Talmud and halacha, Rav Daniel also draws his innovative insights from his profound knowledge of Maharal, Kabbala and Chassidut, especially the teachings of the first Lubavitcher Rebbe and his student Rav Aaron Halevi. In addition to his work as the community Rabbi of Bat Ayin, Israel, Rav Daniel lectures and conducts long and short term seminars and retreats for Rabbis, academic staffs and private groups throughout Israel.Rav Daniel is also a professional composer and talented clarinet player whose albums and performances are a unique genre of spiritual music, meditation and Torah teaching.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
The path of prayer carries us to the depths of who we are and why we are here. Follow it! guided by these masterful teachings.
לחן עדין, מרומם ונוגע ללב לפיוט עתיקת הימים מעוז צור צפו גם בקליפ ביו טוב כאן https://youtu.be/QDt2pxbYQe4?si=eMhinmo_FK1VkwQU ברכות לחג שמח! A touching and dramatic new melody for the timeless poem Maoz Tzur. Be sure to watch the animated clip here: https://youtu.be/QDt2pxbYQe4?si=eMhinmo_FK1VkwQU Click to stay updated👉 https://chat.whatsapp.com/BWT6MxCKPxvKvADAyalWfC ניגון חדש ומרגש למעוז צור; חנוכה תשפ"ד | A new & touching melody for Maoz Tzur; Hanukkah 5784 Maoz Tzur is one of the most beloved traditional Jewish folk ballads, and this new melody is sure to capture your imagination. Enjoy this beautiful piece today! This original melody, based on the ancient hymn "Ma'oz Tzur," connects us to the victories of a people who, somehow, endured everything and remains ready for our world's redemption. Melody, vocals, and clarinet: Rabbi Daniel Kohn Piano: David Adda Brass, flute, strings, guitars, bass,' percussion, choir: Alon Hillel Vocal production: Eli Schweibel Arrangement and production: Lulka Studio Illustrations: Meirav Bar Lev 3D video editing: Shlomo Muskal In this video, I'm sharing a new & moving melody for Maoz Tzur, composed in celebration of Hanukkah 5784. This lovely piece is perfect for your Hanukkah celebrations, and it's sure to bring joy to your heart! Maoz Tzur is one of the most beloved traditional Jewish folk ballads, and this new melody is sure to capture your imagination. Enjoy this beautiful piece today! לחן מקורי זה לפיוט עתיקת הימים מעוז צור מחבר אותנו אל נצחיות העם שאיכשהו עבר את הכל ונשאר. לחן, שירה וקלרינט: הרב דניאל כהן פסנתר: דוד עדה בראס, חליל, מיתרים, גיטרות, בס, תופים ומקהלה: אלון הלל הפקת שירה: אלי שווייבל עיבוד והפקה: סטודיו לולקה איורים: מירב בר לב עריכת וידיאו תלת מימד: שלמה מוסקל #חנוכה #שיריחנוכה #hanukkah #hanukkah2023 #hanukkahsongs #Chanukkahmusic #Chanukkahsong
אלול נותן לנו לול (חלון קטן) להציץ דרכו אל השנה החדשה...אשנב של רחמים, כוח של התחדשות. ערב של מוזיקה, עבודה רוחנית ושמחה פנימית. אין כמו להיות שם אבל הנה טעימה קטנטנה באהבה
100 - RDaniel - Netiv HaTorah -Don't Touch, Chapter 10 (21.3.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
103 - RDaniel - Netiv HaTorah - Rakiya; Hevel, Chapter 10 (18.4.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
104 - RDaniel - Netiv HaTorah -You Have It All, Chapter 10 (2.5.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
105 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Brief Opening To Torah For The Poor (23.5.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
107 - RDaniel - Netiv HaTorah - All Of Life, Rabbi Shimon, Lag BaOmer, Chapter 10 (5.9.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
96 - RDaniel - NetivHatorah - Rakiya And Order, Chapter 10 (7.2.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
95 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah -The Voice Between, First Mitzvah (31.1.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
94 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Deep Self (referencing VaEira), Chapter 10b (24.1.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
98 - RDaniel - Netiv HaTorah - Livnat HaSapir And Rakiya And Techelet (21.2.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
99 - RDaniel - Netiv Hatorah - Purim, The Plowing Of What Is Real (28.2.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
101 - RDaniel - Netiv HaTorah - Pesach, On Every Generation, Chapter 10 (28.3.23).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
86 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Love And Fear, Chapter 9a (8.11.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
85 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Less Than Unborn, Chapter 8 (5.7.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
81 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Expansive And Exanding Seichel, Chapter 8 (7.6.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
79 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - The Intelligence Of The Order Of The Cosmos - Review (24.5.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
78 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Conversation On Our Relationship With Our People's Past (17.5.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
77 - RDaniel - NetivHatorh - In - Formation, Chapter 8 (10.5.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
73 - RDaniel - NetivHatorah -Purim, Poriyut, Love Of Torah Brings The Rain, Chapter 7 (15.3.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
76 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Life And Purpose, Chapter 7 (3.5.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
80 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Making People, Making Torah, Chapter 8 (31.5.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
66 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Expanded Imagination Is Not Expanded Consciousness (26.12.21).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
65 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Reality, Virtual Reality And Death, Chapter 7 (19.12.21).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
71 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Support The Tree Of Life, Chapter 7 (15.2.22).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
64 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Choni And The Meta - Universe Of Dreams, Chapter 7 (12.12.21).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
63 - RDaniel - NetivHatorah - Chanukah - The Physical And Metaphysical, Chapter 6 (28.11.21).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
61 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah -The Dark Akeida To The Light Of Love, Chapter 4 (15.11.21).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
52 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Toratam Kevah, Chapter 4 (21.2.21).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
57 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah -The Beads Under The Beard - Temptations Of Chein (24.5.21).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
41 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Emergent Seichel, Chapter 4 (6.12.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
35 - RDaniel - NetivHatorah - Kohelet,The Expansiveness Of Hevel ,The Mitzvah Meal (11.10.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
37 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Losing Your Home, Chapter 3 (25.10.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
33 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Expanded Awareness Vs. The Kingdom Of Anti Meaning (15.9.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
31 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - The Smaller The Bigger, Chapter 3 (2.8.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
36 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Lots Of Food Everywhere;also Kohelet, Chapter 3 (18.10.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
27 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Becoming Within Being, Chapter 3 (5.7.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
26 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Getting To The Core, Chapter 3 (2.7.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
25 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Eat Like An Animal, Chapter 3 (28.6.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
24 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - The End Of Jealousy, Chapter 3 (21.6.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
22 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Expaning Knowledge Of G - D, Chapt 3 (4.6.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
21 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah -Torah For Walkers, Summary Of The First 3 Chapters (22.5.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
29 - RDaniel - NetivHaTorah - Crown And Belly, Chapter 3 (19.7.20).MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: How Yaakov's aspect of Tiferet is the beauty that results from the connecting back of an individual element of the world to its source.
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: Exploring the tamati, the "twinning" aspect of love.
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: God's vulnerability in seducing man to go into the Garden of Even and giving him the option to refuse.
[B19] In-Breath, Out-Breath
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: Exploring aspects of Yaakov as servant, Yisrael as son.
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Related to episode [B02] Recognizing the Good, a Heart that Knows, Clinging to Him
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Related to episode [B13] Al kol midah umidah
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: Joy and love are prerequisites for doing mitzot. This is a great avodah.
Related to episode [B13] For Everything He Measures Out to You
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: The awareness of being complete without lack leads to an experience of sufficiency. Then one comes to the reality of G-d and from there one is able to love.
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: The awareness of being complete without lack leads to an experience of sufficiency. Then one comes to the reality of G-d and from there one is able to love.
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: The aspect of temimut and fearlessness in Avraham.
Series: Efrat, Love & Relationship with God
Synopsis: A discussion on Rambam's opinion that pleasure is the motivation for love. A prerequisite to Avraham as lover of G-d.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript: Last time we were learning we had uncovered a very amazing feature about Yosef Hatzadik. And that is that everything about what he is is hinted in his name that Rachel Imeinu gave him. He's actually defined in two realizations in life: one is that, she declares as soon as he's born asaf Hashem et cherpati. That G-d has gathered in my degradation. And the other is she says rather, well, if he were listening when he was born he might have been somewhat disturbed by the other thing she says, which is naming him Yosef by virtue of Yosif li ben acher, that I have a prayer that there should be another one. It's a rather funny thing to be called. Because it actually means about you that you're nothing but a transition. Nothing but an avenue for other things to come into the world. His mother expresses her sense of him as really being that which is to be traversed in order that the next child be born. And in fact Rachel is very connected to that phenomenon as we've spoken about her in the past, that she is the behina of this world, she's the alma d'it galya , about which the rabbis say is simply a passageway to the next. And her herself, she herself, participates in that as becomes reveals when she dies "on the way." And Yaakov emphasizes that, the Chumash emphasizes that, she dies "on the way," derech Efrata. Towards the place of fertility. She never really arrives there. She dies on the way to that realization, and so, in a sense Yosef is really her image in being the one who lives "on the way." But what was most real for us about Yosef in that is what we explored last week, Yosef as the channel. And his personal way of being which was – our primary last week was -- in giving over life. And that's what Yosef does. He gives over life, he's the mashbir l’khol ha'aretz. And he stands in a radical difference from the way of living that his brothers live, or especially as expressed by Yehuda, which is of containment. Containment. Yehuda, who is the malchut , literally malchut is kelim, is, the letters of malchut actually is kelim. That's what malchut does. Is it creates kelim and it's very good at that, and that's very, very crucial, but it also has a tremendous failing when the kelim become self-serving, and the structures become a self-justifying reality in which the – like we all know it in politics – where the bureaucracy becomes its own self-serving system. And we all know it in personality also. When our personality actually becomes self-serving. By which I mean, when we have a way of being in the world that we become very, very protective of. Become very, very insistent upon. And we become very expressed through and identified with, to the point that all we see is ourselves, and then, rather than being a picture of that which is beyond, which is what the malchut is meant to be – it's a temuna, it says in the kabala the malchut is the temuna -- it's the picture. Instead of being a picture it becomes a false mirror. In other words, a true reflection of what is, is the true path of malchut, in which it's expressing that which is feeding into it, and is expressing it outside of itself as the image. So, too, in a personality. When you're authentic to what it is that you're manifesting so that's an integris picture of who it is that you are. But often times we find ourselves becoming very much involved in looking at the image that we've created and becoming, in a sense, worshipers of that image. It becomes the avoda zara of personality when that which you've created as your persona becomes that which you worship, and that which you protect and that which you preserve. And then instead of it being a picture of what is, it becomes a mirror of its own self. And as we saw last time, Yaakov actually tells that to his children before they sat [set?] out on the path of their meeting with Yosef, their first meeting with Yosef. Which begins, as we saw last week, with him saying to them, it says that Yaakov saw that there was shever in Mitzrayim. That he saw – of course literally in the pshat is he saw that there was what to buy in Egypt. There was food in Egypt. Shever; it means food and what to purchase. But shever also means, as we know, a crack. He saw that there was a sever, a severing, in Mitzrayim. Probably shever and sever, in English, are related. Because there was a cleavage in Mitzrayim. And that cleavage and that severing is what's called in the kabbala the ateret hayesod. Which is the place where things open up into reality outside themselves. And so he saw that there was this cleavage, this break in Mitzrayim, he saw there was an opportunity in Mitzrayim, for something to be born. And he says to his children lama titra'u. How comes you're just standing around here looking at each other. But, more deeply, because it's the reflexive, "how come you're just standing around looking at yourselves?" He mamash says it to them; so clear. You're just standing around looking at yourselves; all you have is these persona that you've created, and all you're doing is looking at them. And the only relationship you have with the world outside you is just figuring out how it's going to harm or feed that which you've already created about yourself that you are going to maintain. But you have no interest, really, in the outside reality as something from which you could possibly learn, grow from, which you would actually invest in, as something which would become a greater realization because of your investment in it. That's not at all your interest; you're just interested in maintaining the institutions that you've created. And they're great institution makers; I mean, they are. Like, although, clearly I sort of see myself belonging on the Yosef side of the map, I don't want to denigrate the great institution makers, and they are. But that's basically what Yehuda does; he goes to Mitzrayim in order to build the Beit Midrash there: v'yishlach le'horot. He's sent ahead to teach in the Beit Midrash and to set up the yeshiva, Rashi says, that are going to be in Goshen. That's his task. But, as we all know, when an educational institution, for instance, just becomes its own self-serving fact, so then the students in it become secondary. It's like, I'm working now with this charitable organization, who's supposed to funnel money that someone has donated to make a commemoration for Shlomo who was murdered a month and a half ago, and so, I'm just watching how they're really well meaning, you know, they really want to be a charitable organization. But they've created this monster! There's like all this overhead. So from a rather large donation, they want to take 10%, which is more than $10,000. Just to give you a sense of what … Now, they don't have all that much work to do. But, I mean, the people are there, they're full-time, I mean it's like there are 2 people on staff and there's a space they're renting, and it's like this big thing. So then they need the donations to keep themselves running. That's what institutions become instead of -- losing the vision of what it was they were set-up for – they become their own self-serving thing of seeing themselves. And, literally, the attitude becomes one of spying, which we saw last week as Yosef's accusation to the brothers: "you've come spying." Because when all you're doing is being committed to the maintenance of the forms that you've made, so then the only attitude that you're really going to be willing to have with that which is outside of you is to spy all the time, whether it's going to be to your advantage or to your disadvantage. And the vision that you originally had that you're supposed to be a picture of, and maintain a perfect reflection of, becomes lost and clouded. And this is one element of what the kabala calls kitzutz b'netiyot, when the malchut is like a plant which has been cut off from its source. Like a plant that's been cut off out of the ground. That's ultimate sin in kabbala. That's ultimate sin; that's the root of avoda zara. And it is the root of avoda zara! It's when the things that are creations that are pictures of that which is beyond loose the beauty that they have as the reflection of what is beyond and they become self-serving phenomenon. That was the sod of lama titra'u that Yaakov says to the children: "All you're doing is looking at yourselves. What you need is the man who is the man of shever ." And the man who is the man of shever is Yosef always. Yosef is always in a crisis. He's always in the place of the shever. And he creates crises; he does! Yaakov Avinu, when he was mevakesh shalva, as we saw, so, ele toldot Yaakov – if you want to see someone growing, toldot Yaakov, if you want to see Yaakov producing, ele toldot Yaakov, Yosef,ben 17 shana. So bring on Yosef, right? The rest of the brothers don't even matter in the depiction of ele toldot Yaakov: well where are the rest of them? There's Reuben, Shimon, Levy, Yehuda, Yissachar, Zevulun, Dan, Naftali; where are they all? The only toldot of Yaakov, the only one who makes Yaakov continue to grow, is Yosef. Because Yaakov, who, as we saw last week, is simply a fire – just a fire burning, he doesn't reach out of himself – so he would just stay put. [16:44] Kafatz alav rogzo shel Yosef Rashi says: the guy whose whole being says "hey, where you are, it's just a transition to the next place." That's all. It's just transitions all the time. Don't get snagged on where you've come to; there's something else waiting for you. That's Yosef. Don't get snagged. So kafatz alav rogzo shel Yosef : Yaakov knows this about Yosef. He finds it out more and more. And then finally, when he, I believe, comes to the realization that his path has been, sort of, "lehitra'ot," you know, to just "see himself" all the time, and for them to see themselves, when he comes to that, then he can send the children out to meet Yosef. I don't know if these are conscious processes, but in the story that's mamash what happens. He sends Yosef to the brothers to make shalom, which, as we saw last week, is always involved in moving beyond. It's not shalva, it's not "peace." Right? It's not peace, as we saw, peace and pius is simply, what's it called, appeasement. There's a fancy word: rapprochement. That's not shalom. That's like, ensconcing things as they are. But Yosef insists on the moving; that's why he will always be the ish shalom. That's such a different perspective, and we saw last week how much he plays that out. But that comes from a perspective on reality which is that way. Which is why we saw last week that he's the candle, he's the flame. And he teaches his brother this consciousness, in telling them of 10 candles, 10 lights, 10 fires, flames couldn't put out one, certainly one can't put out ten. When flames meet they just make each other brighter. "I met you; all you did was make me brighter, and yourselves brighter, and that's all I've been about since you did what you did to me – all I've been about is making you brighter and making me brighter. That's all I've been about. And making the world brighter. Doesn't matter what you'll do, and how dark a place you'll throw me into." And they throw him into the darkest place. It's like a way of living, all the time, to be touching that. But he's also always in crisis. There's always like a crisis, like a shever, because he can never sit still, like, where he's come to is not good enough. But for him it's not out of driveness, it's out of there's just so much more, there's always more fire to burn, there's always more reality to expose, always more connections to make. Connections to make, which is where growth and reality comes from. This is why he names his son Ephraim for. He names his son Ephraim. And Yaakov recognizes Ephraim, even though he's the second son, as being the primary son. Because that's, yeah, "that's Yosef." The man of incessant creativity and fertility; that's Yosef; he's always opening up for more. That's Ephraim.
So these are the themes that we explored last week with more openings here of the nature of how this works in personality, in human personality. And how they became entrapped and therefore spies, and ceased to be brothers. Which is what basically he accuses them of. So, this is what we explored last time, and the nature of Yosef's name, is yosif li ben acher. And the other thing, which I'm not sure I spoke out enough, which I sorely don't want to forget, and that is Yosef in his being for those people he meets. And this is another, this is a trap, which is a trap for Yosef. It's not a Yehuda trap, it's a Yosef trap. Yehuda we made enough critique of. And Yehuda desperately needs Yosef. Just as all the institution makers need the one who's always breaking the kelim. Always making a shever. They need them. They invite them in; I don't know, they may have trouble with them. But, that's a true need of the "Yehudaim" in the world, is that there be a shever to break the place out of what it just becomes more thickly and thickly self-justifying and self-creating-with. So, but the great failing in Yosef is he becomes self-involved. That's different than trying to maintain a veneer. Yosef will never try to maintain the veneer. He doesn't really care about the veneer; the veneer just gets in the way. Doesn't care about the persona. It's like, not his thing. But what he does become in his failing, and where he needs Yehuda, is he becomes self-involved. He just becomes, like, it's all about growing. It's all about creating. Right? So, "leave me to my artistry." And then there's no – this I give for Sarah -- there's no "for-ness." You know, what they call – I think that's a made-up word – but there's no for-ness, there's no being for the, for being completely devoted to truth, to creative expression, to realization, but then it becomes, in its failing, personal realization. And personal involvement. And that's his way of becoming, he's not titra'u in the sense of just looking at himself; it's not that he's looking at himself. He's just like – in the sense of trying to mirror himself. The way the Yehuda people become. He's just self-involved. He's not for the people he's coming in contact with. That's Yosef who's fixing his hair, looking in his mirror making sure he looks nice. He's outward directed, but self-involved. That's Yosef the na'ar, the adolescent Yosef. Who just becomes caught up in his own stuff and loses his for-ness. Of course the great tikkun of Yosef comes by virtue of what Paro puts him in charge of, which is to become the mashbir kol ha'aretz. Which is the greatest thing Yosef can do. Is to become completely a channel for the goodness which he brings out and into the world from beyond himself. And then he becomes a channel; that's like, clog up the Yosef and mamash the guy's going to die! Once he realizes his tikkun. And even when he's not in a realized tikkun he's like, he really in a sense deserves to die. That's simply a reflection of what he himself is sort of giving off. Because if Yosef isn't for others, if Yosef isn't out there seeking shlom acheicha, seeking the peace of your brothers, he's not out there and that's why his father sends him out to do that. "You can't stay home, Yosef! You gotta be out there seeking the shlom of your brothers, 'cause if you don't you'll just die!" So, in a sense, Paro really gives him his tikkun, to make him mashbir kol ha'aretz. It's just funny, because he'll be not only the one who provides all the nutrition and sustenance of the land, but he's also a crisis maker: the mashbir kol ha'aretz. He creates crises! He creates openings for people. He was always shuddering them out of their complacency.
"Is he creating a crisis or revealing a crisis that's there?"
Revealing the crisis that's there, beseder, OK, I'm not even sure. I mean, of course, from his perspective he's only creating, he's only revealing something which is there, latent in the reality as it is and just kinda exposing the openings that people have not come to recognize in themselves, for sure. But from the perspective of the people he's [? Working them? 26:10.2]. They probably experience him as making crises. In any case, so, Yosef, that's his tikkun, that's when the yesod becomes a giver. And that's his only tikkun, he's like, he's a dead man without that. He's a dead man; there's no existence for him. That's why Yaakov, knowing this about Yosef, as we saw, says about him that "you're the flame. I might be the fire; I might have been perfectly happy b'eretz migurei aviv, just going back home." Which is the way the chumash describes vyeshev Yaakov b'eretz migurei aviv ???? [26:59.3]: "I didn't like that whole galus thing, you know, that wasn't what I was looking for. I just got, like, chased into it. But, you know, I'm a fire. But in order for a fire to get back to Eretz Yisrael, so, we need a flame in order to get back to the place from which we can really give. We need the flame. That's you, Yosef." So, you hear in that description of him -- these primary depictions of these characters is just so marvelous, how precise Chazal are, and so deserving of real, in Hebrew it's called mishush, you know, like, I don't know if there's a good English word for that, of like, just, touching them and caressing them and moving them around – but that depiction of Yosef is also a description of his essence and therefore also of his tikkun: he always has to be a flame. Always has to be a flame. And a flame is lighting others, and is also igniting others. And [I'll? 28;16.2] experience him both ways.
So we saw, in our context of achoti, ra'ayati, yonati, tamati, so we saw in that context that Yosef brings this about in people by looking in their eyes. We were in a context of achoti, ra'ayati, yonati, tamati, with achoti Avraham, ra'ayati Yitzhak, yonati is Yosef, he's the yonah who the kabalah says looks infinitely into the eyes of the other, her partner, all the time, she's always like, very … it's a deep, deep ne'emanut that the yonah has. And it's in that both reliability and investment and faithfulness, so she exposes the infinite wellsprings of the other. So, in that sense, it's like lighting the fire of the other to look in their eyes; it's very delicate, and you have to be careful how you do it. It's tricky. But, that's how you bring another person out really, unless they're so caught up in their own being ashamed of themselves that they can't let you look in. And that will be what it will be; it's, that's what'll do it, right? Like, we turn our eyes down; it's like, we're embarrassed. And correctly so; we're embarrassed. And often times incorrectly so. But that's where a person who's embarrassed by something that's how, you know: "looked him straight in the eyes." You know. That's when it's power. But that you're willing to hold the glance, and look back, that's when you can rely on me. Right? The one who's being looked at and being willing to look back, it's "you can rely on me; you can count on me. There's nothing I'm ashamed of which I'm afraid that if it would be exposed then you'll cease to trust me." I think all those words revolve around the issue of looking into each other's eyes, which the yona is representative of.
So, I don't know, but – I do know – that, I mean, we don't have explicit statements of this in Chazal about Yosef, you know, looking into people's eyes, but what we do have is that Yaakov Avinu calls him the shor. The bull. So people normally associate that with, and correctly, they associate with fertility. But here's a deeper secret about shor: and that is that shor means seeing. It means looking. In Hebrew mi yishurenu, his vision is so long, mi yishurenu. Mi yishurenu is from Parshat Bilam. Bilam says this. "Wow! [32:23.7?] tov…." I don't remember the precise pasuk, but mi yeshurenu. Who can see it? shurai'na, in Aramaic means vision. Shuraina. Banot tza'ada alei shur is a play on words. It's about the women in Mitzrayim who – it's got a triple play on words, it's unbelievable – Banot tza'ada alei shur: are you familiar with the pasuk? It's in the bracha of Yosef. Ben porat Yosef [33.00.4?] porat alei ayin: he's the one, the fertile one, the beautiful one. Porat means fertile and beautiful. Alei ayin: he's the one who is above the eye. He's the one who's above the eye, or, as some interpret it: he's the olay ayin, he's like the springs of the eye. Springs of the eye. Banot tza'ada alei shur: the women were marching on the shur – did we talk about this last week? Great! The women march on the shur, meaning, literally, it means a shur is a wall, so it's the origin of the – excuse the expression – they were "climbing the walls." To see him. 'Cause he was so beautiful and so attractive, and so igniting. Extremely charismatic personality. Igniting everyone. Banot tza'ada alei ishur is a play also on him being the shor. Being the ox, as Yaakov calls him. Then: banot tza'ada alei shur they're trying to get up and over the usual way of looking at things. So that they can really look at him. So shur is a wall that you climb up on in order to get a better view, it's an ox, because it's extremely fertilizing, and productive, and it's seeing. It's [just? a] beautiful pasuk; it's really an amazing pasuk: banot tza'ada alei shur . And that's because Yosef, as we have revealed by virtue of him being connected to the yona. In this pasuk Yosef is the one who brings out fertility by looking into the other's eyes. And, in that looking, not from the place ruling and taking control, which is the abuse of that when you're looking at someone who's ashamed of themselves, so that's how you get control over them: you look them straight in the eye, right? And you know that they feel lowly about themselves and demeaned about themselves, and they're like, just garbage. So the more you look them in the eyes the more low they feel. Because you must be seeing all that stuff that they've got. And the more ashamed they are: that's how people gain control, the guys who can hold the glance are the ones – not because they're not ashamed of anything, just because they have the power, the "power glance" -- I think they have assertiveness classes – if they don't then I'll teach it to them! Not that I necessarily have it, but I know what's going on! The "power glance" is like, when, you're giving the glance in a way in which you're seeking to shame – this is extremely important for the second part of what we're going to explore this morning – but the power glance is when you're seeking to intimidate the other person by the way you're looking into their eyes, 'cause they're just feeling embarrassed and ashamed and belittled and nothing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But that creates – it's for me not to just, like, slip into it – but that creates what's called ona'a, which is what we've taken upon ourselves to look at today, which is the other aspect of Yosef, who's totally against that. But that creates ona'a, which we began to explore last time, which is the denigration and devaluing of the other. Which we're going to explore more today. Just put that aside for now, so you can see how the question of the use of the eyes and what you're seeing in the other person is so big. But having the ayin tova of Yosef, having a good eye, is to look at the other in a way that empowers them. That creates trust and love and connection and commitment and investment. Those are all words for the yona. That's really what those girls were looking for. And climbing up the wall [for]. But you can see how – I mean, this is a delicate conversation, 'cause you can see how easily tripped up that can become into a power play, or into some base excitement that the charismatic people produce and then utilize that, when they're self-involved, to gain the sense of worth or control or whatever it is that they're looking for. Right? That's how charismatic people then become self-involved and use the charisma and use the chiyuniyut to destroy people's lives. Mamash. Destroys people's lives, and to destroy relationships. And they always get involved in other people's relationships. They always seek to break them, ruin them, and they can't keep their own. They go from relationship to relationship, from woman to woman, from man to man, however it'll be.
So [39:01.3 ?? yesod], what're you going to do; it's heavy stuff. It's the very foundations: you don't have this? You don't have anything! Mamash. If you don't have this foundation in life, the things we're teaching this morning? You mamash, everything else is just completely destroyed and you'll have Yehuda going haywire in all of his institution building and kelim building and persona building. And you'll have the rest of the binyan clogged up and unable to come to expression. And you'll have Yosef completely self-involved. And just, using all these powers, to their precise perversion. Of what they're given to him for. So, so to speak, the yesod needs the yesod. Right? The yesod needs to have within it this ongoing realization of "I'm just a passageway. Just, this is coming through me; it has nothing to do with me. It's just what's coming through, and I want to share that and give that over and be with the other in that." We saw that, if you remember, in David in lev tov, when [what?] he actually does. But Yosef just does it with his eyes. He's not really so much the doer, Yosef. He's the one who creates the belief that people can have in themselves to go and do. But he's not the doer; he doesn't make the kelim. The only way he knows what to do in Mitrayim is because he interpreted Paro's dream. Couldn't have figured it out for himself! There are some people who interpret Yosef as like the gashmiyut and Yehuda the ruchniyut and all these crazy things which are complete violations of the text: Yosef is not a kelim maker. He just rides around on the chariot in Egypt and gets everyone really excited about being Egyptian, or whatever. He doesn't really do anything. He just interprets Paro's dream; he knows what needs to get done – v'yafked pikidi – and he sets up all of the pekidim – what's the word in English for that? they're called the clerks – they're like "take care of everything" and they take care of everything. So, if it's not flowing through him, then it becomes snagged on itself and it becomes extremely destructive. I don't think there's anything more destructive than burning people up!
So, the yona, in her beautiful place of investment, commitment, liability, sticking with her partner – that's what the yona is the primary image of – is the real Yosef, so to speak. And when he invests that into the malchut, so then the malchut can become for the people. And not just for the institutions it's created. And when he lives that, so then he can become for the other. And not just for himself. So this is some of the tapestry of the yona of Yosef, of yonati. But there's another very, very deep and important aspect of this, and this is where we'd gotten to last week. And that is the other aspect of his name. And that is that Rachel says "you've saved me from shame." And now you can really appreciate from this perspective and in this context how that's his first name. "My first experience of you, Yosef," Rachel says, "is you protect me from shame. Yeah. When you look into my eyes, I don't feel ashamed, I feel trusted. When you look into my eyes, I don't feel denigrated and small and embarrassed, I feel enlarged. Like, there's more to be born here, more to grow here." Asaf et cherpati. You're whole being is built, and its tikkun, on the guarding of other's from shame, and relating to them in such a way that the shame will not be their primary experience. They might be embarrassed about something, ok. Like, we all have what to be embarrassed about. We all have the things we're messed up about. But that the primary experience should be that we're embarrassed and ashamed? Is to enslave the person and to rule over them and to entrap them, because then they become so belittled that they have no power to do anything at all. Shame is the greatest and most powerful disenabler. It's like, you don't want anything, you don't want anybody to know about anything that you are, so it's better to keep it to yourself. [45:27.7 "no excuse me"?]; people just walk into the room, you know, and create this whole environment of "excuse me; is it ok?" they sit down very carefully as if they don't want to bother anyone, like they're the most "bothering" people who could come into the room, are the ones who, like, come into the room with this sense of "I don't want to bother anyone!" You know these kinds of things? Walk in and it's like [whispers] "excuse me," like, all closed up inside themselves; it creates this energy in the room of "eew! I don't want to be here!" Because that's all they're giving off all the time is "I don't want to be here!" Because to be ashamed, in shame, is to be in this shmama, which is literally what – are you allowed to do drashas on English words into Hebrew words? No, it's a shmama; that's what it is. Shame is a shmama. Shame is the inverse – all right, as long as we went there, but we won't spend too much time on this – but, shame, like to make a name for yourself is, like, when you're ready to go out there. You know, when the malchus makes a shem: baruch shem kavod malchuto, the malchus makes a shem, makes a name for itself. It's not embarrassed, right? It's not embarrassed. When you're empowered, you're out there to make a name. G-d says to Avraham Avinu agadla shmeicha, I'm going to make your name great. But if you live shame, if you live the English version of shin-mem, then you're really living a shmama, which is your living "name" as a devastation. Shmama is a devastation. You're living the inverse of shame. Forget the English for now; just listen in Hebrew. The inverse of shame, of name, is shmama, is to be like a desolation. That's what it means in Hebrew: a desolation. And that's because of "shame" in English, that's because of embarrassment. Of, ok. Enough of that, enough explaining.
But the point is that Yosef HaTzadik is able to make the malchut want to be a name. Is able to make another want to be exposed. Is able to, himself, expose, himself, and cut away the blockages. Because even though he may have things of which he is ashamed, and we all should, and do our tikkunim on them, that's not his prime experience of life. His prime experience of life is asaf Hashem et cherpati – like Rachel implants it in him in the outset. "This is who you are. You know what you did for me Yosef? Thank you. You've taken away my shame. You've taken away my degradation." That's so beautiful; that's her first experience of him. Imagine being born into the world with that! That means your primary reality is to function in the world in a way in which you are gathering people's shame by giving them the power to be who they are most fully. And when Yosef's orientation is that, then instead of his charisma becoming a way in which he lords himself over people, it becomes a way in which he ignites them and burns their fire so that instead of burning with shame, which is the other possibility, right, instead they burn with creativity and fertility and then the malchut really becomes what it needs to become.
So I want to explore a little more of that today. We have this curious word usage, words that come up around Yosef. We saw shalom coming up around Yosef a lot. We saw yosef, his power of tosefet. We saw shever, and mashbir. Another word which is a primal word, and the word is on. Alef-vav-nun: on, comes up a lot. Comes up first in Onen, who's Yehuda's son. It comes up again when Yosef marries the daughter of, my gosh of all people, the prince, the priest of On. Bat Potifera kohen on. And it actually comes up deeply the first time in the Torah in the name of Binyamin when Rachel says "oh, you; you are the son of my on", alef-vav-nun, ben oni. Father calls him Biniyamin, but she calls him ben-oni. M'eanyen. 'Cause if her prayer with Yosef was "Yosef li ben acher," so, who's the on that Benyamin is the son of? I mean, literally it means, in the pshat, the son of my sorrow. Because on means sorrow. On also means power. About Reuben, Yaakov says kochi v'reishit oni. The first of my power. So is Yosef the on that Benyamin is the son of? "The son of my on." I mean, he's the son that, in a sense, Yosef brought her, right? Thanks to Yosef she'll have another son. Interesting. Now, an onen is someone who is sexually self-involved. That's who On was, the son of Yehuda; clearly turned it on himself. That's why he died, and Er died, etc. What Tamar does, is she draws Yehuda out of himself. I mean, as a whore, but she draws him out of himself to do the giving that he's meant to do, which is to fill her with a child that On and Er did not. So, in a sense, he has to overcome the, so to speak, onenut of his child in the relation with Tamar. So, the Ramak, Rav Moshe Cordevero, says in the Erkei Kinuyim, in the Pardes, that Tamar is the Ateret hayesod. That she's the opening of the yesod, and some say she's malchut. What is that? I'll tell you what that is. And I think we began to hint at this last week. She is a feminine embodiment of Yosef. As the verse says: Tzadik k'tamar yifrach. The tzadik, who is Yosef, blossoms like a Tamar. Ah! Oh, I get it! So she's actually drawing Yehudah out into what he needs to become, the one who would impregnate another. So she's functioning there as the teacher of Yehuda. In a very similar fashion that Yosef functions as the teacher of Yehuda in saying "you're just spies, just involved with yourselves. Just mirroring your own realities all the time. Hey, take a look" – take a look, where? At the petach einayim, 'cause that's where he meets her. She's sitting there at the petach einayim. That's Yosef bechina: "open up your eyes, open up your eyes! Take a look, hey! Here I am!" Right? She's sitting at the petach einayim. And she gets Yehuda to open up his eyes! And then again, it's not in the very best of circumstances, but nebech, some people need processes, as they say. So, part of the process for some of them is – all right, enough said. But the, yeah. So, she does the most amazing thing. And, it's really the pinnacle of the story, in the Chumash, and it's certainly the pinnacle of the story [as] the Rabbis describe it, and that is, she is ready to sacrifice herself, lest he be shamed. That's what happens, right? She's there, about to be burned, and she sends to him, apparently in a box, or someone that other's wouldn't see it, she sends to him "you know, the one who this signet and cloth belongs to?" – sorry, "staff, belongs to? That's the one who I've been made pregnant by." Now, the Rabbis even have it more intense: hi mutzeit. They have it she was already set on fire. In Hebrew hatzata means to "ignite it." With an alef means "she's been taken out," but without the alef , it means she's been "set on fire." So she's already burning. And she sends it to him in a discreet fashion, for him to decide whether he wants to expose himself or not. I mean, come on! Come on! Just tell them it's Yehuda! He's the one, actually, who declared "she shall be burned." Ah. So the Rabbis say, and Rashi brings it mamashi like a pshat, even though it's a Rashi in which his issue, I don't think, is in the structural problems in the pasuk, but rather it's in the content problems in the pasuk: "why is she doing this! [she's] in danger!" So he says, "well, you know what? You know what she was? She was observing the rule, which is 'it's better to be burned in an oven than to shame someone.'" Better you burn, then that they burn. Basically. Better that you burn, literally, then that they should burn in shame. It comes down to halacha! I mean, I don't know exactly what the precise application of the din would be, but the Gemara takes it very literally, and tells stories about people who actually lived that way, and almost died that way. But you see the pinnacle of the story of Yehuda and Tamar is that she will not shame him. And that becomes him saying tzadka mimeini, "wow; she is far more righteous than I am! She's mode to that." He learns that from her. This thing about not shaming. He learns that from Yosef's feminine version.
So, you know, the same root, in Hebrew, for on is the word that the Rabbis use for shaming another, and degrading them: it's called ona'ah. Ona'at devarim. It's when you say to someone "you stinking nothing; who do you think you are, to have something to say about this matter? Why, just last week I saw you eating pork!" Or, if you don't have him on something, "I know who your parents were!" Or, if you don't want to…
"Hona'ah?"
Ona'ah. Hona'ah is "trickery." Ona'ah is causing this kind of destructive pain to another, but it's a very specific kind of pain. On is pain, it's a power pain. That's why in Hebrew the word on means both power and pain. It's a "power pain," in which you use their pain to become empowered over them. By shaming them. Or, if you're not going to shame them, so then you just "toy" with them. Like, if you walk into a store, the Mishna says, and you ask the guy "how much does this cost," while you're snickering – either inside or with your buddy – "how much does this cost?" "Well, I'll look it up;" he's like, working it all out, looking it up, and, you know, "how much is that, and how much is that, and how much is that;" you've got the guy, like, ping-ponging around the whole store, you know, like – what's that machine called? Like a pinball machine. And like, "yuk, yuk, yuk, hah, hah, hah!" Well, that evil laugh is the laugh of ona'ah, the rabbis say. Now, there, you're not even embarrassing him. 'Cause you could actually walk out of the store without him knowing what you were up to. But what you were doing is a power ploy. In which you're using his weakness and his needs to lord yourself over him, by making him more and more worthless. That's why the rabbis, by the way, say "just like there's ona'ah, with commerce, there's also ona'ah with devarim. Same thing. When I overcharge you, or you under-buy me: same thing." What do you mean "same thing?" Doesn't look like the same thing; it's exactly the same thing. It's a power-play: I've got you being taken advantage of in my little play-thing. Right? That's what the picture is: my little play-thing. That's a different madreiga, the one with playing with him in the store, or playing with the prices. But the more painful one is when it's "you are nothing. Why, just a year ago, you were eating this or that, doing this or that." Using shame against them. As a ploy of power: that's ona'ah. Is that related to on, or onen? Yeah, sure it is. It's just all the self-involved use of my power, my charisma, my standing, my eyes, in the act of the precise inversion of reliability, integrity, and faithfulness. It's the exact inversion of it. That's what it looks like, it's oneinut. So, guess what? That word, on, the Radak says, is also written in Hebrew in the Tanach sometimes, like in Yishaya, in a word cherev hayona. The yona comes from the same root. It's the sort of destructiveness in that pasuk. I have a whole list of them. In Yermiyahu 25, verse 38; Tzefania chapter 3, verse 1.
I guess sometimes it happens that way, right? The same yona can become the birds in Hitchcock's "Birds." That's what's so like, mastery of terror in that film, 'cause, "huh? Little birds?" But, yeah, 'cause, [sigh] that's the way it is in life, you know. Like, I don't know how graphic to get, but it's like, you can be a giver of life or you can pish on people. That's the way… we use that term. You know? Pish on. It's like, they're both functions of yesod. Weird. It's not so weird, because when you want to understand these powers, so you understand how they're mamash both in the same place, they're mamash in the same place. Because the opposite of ne'emanut and emuna is ona'ah. And so the opposite of the yona, who's the bird of peace and the bird of faithfulness, and the bird who looks in the other's eyes with empowerment and appreciating the infinite wellsprings of the other, is also the yona who pecks to death. And lords over. And abuses and shames. Same word in Hebrew.
So here's the [1:07:14.5 ?] perspective of what we were looking at last week of how Yosef – were we looking at it last week? How Yosef tells them "what you thought was going to be evil, G-d has turned around to good." Correct? We were there? I don't entirely remember why, but I can tell you why we're there again this week, because here's the deeper aspect of that: and that is that Yosef as asaf Hashem et cherpati is watching his brothers writhing in shame and telling them "enough of that." Not that you don't have to pass through that. He lets them experience that, and he actually purposely does it. First he says ani Yosef achi, excuse me, Ani Yosef. The first time he meets them, he says "I am Yosef; is my father still alive?" V'lo yachlu dabr – they couldn't talk to him, ki nivhalu mi panav – 'cause they were in total pandemonium of embarrassment. And of fear. I think primarily of embarrassment. Yeah. I think that's how Rashi says it: boshu mi panav. [checks the Rashi] Yeah, nivhalu mi panav: mipnei habusha. And I think he does it on purpose. How do I say that; why do I say that? Ha'od avi chai? Is my father still alive? Got it? It's not like he didn't know whether our father was still alive: they've been talking about the father the whole time! They've been telling him that they can't take Binyamin 'cause "our father will die, nafsho k'shura b'nafsho." Yehuda's been pleading [with] him, that "send him back, because our father, our father…" Yeah, he knows how to use it when he needs to! "Is my father still alive? Or have you killed him? Yet. Like you almost did." Well, then once that's been passed through, that's Yosef, the yona. That's the cherev, man. Careful! Then, Yosef says to them: ani Yosef achichem, "I am Yosef your brother, whom you sold to Mitzrayim." And then, right away, he says "and now, don't be sad, and let it not be harsh in your eyes that you sold me here. Because it's all been for the good. Thank you for what you did." 'Cause it's all been for the good, and he means it. And the way he reveals it to them is when he says: ani Yosef achichem. That's the shift. "I'm your brother." "That's great! You're our brother?" "I'm your brother." "How do we know you're our brother?" "'Cause I'm going to now sew the whole thing together for you," that's ichui - ach, "going to sew the whole thing together for you now. You know, all those things you thought you were doing that were bad, they were really – not only good – they increased light in the world." But he'll only tell them that after they've done real teshuva. Don't play with this one; people like to play with this one. And they go to it too quickly: "it's really ok." Pat, pat, pat. Psychology-psychology-psychology, positive-, positive-, positive. "really, ok, ok, ok, ok. I'm OK; you're OK. Everyone's OK, blah, blah, blah." [next 2 sentences are unclear to me.]You can if you go there too fast, then, you have a [lived? 1:12:01.1] life. [Not a first? 1:12:05.0] ani Yosef, ha'od avi chai? "Huh? Is my father still alive? Not your father; not the way you treated him." Nivhalu mi panav. OK? Shame. Fine. Next. Ani Yosef achichem: "don't be sad, it's ok; everything you did has been for the good."
Imagine really being looked at that way. Like [by] someone you really did wrong to. But not in a way in which you become, like "I can't believe I did this to this person." But, rather, he really, really, really, really, not only, means it, he brings you to mean it and to know it. As it says later v'yedaber el libam, he speaks to their heart. Wow, I'd love to meet someone like that! That's the depth of the yona revealing the infinite wellsprings that you have brought into the world even when what you were doing was seemingly working against it. That's real love. That's the level of yonati. It's not "I've such faith in you, it doesn't matter what you do." "Love means never having to say you're sorry." It's not that. It's after you've said you're sorry. Then, now, let's go someplace together. [And with?] what's really happened. And come of this.
That's Yosef's on. Not his negative on, but his empowering on. That's Binyamin ben oni. The son of – the real on. 'Cause, the other kind of an on doesn't have children. And, thank G-d they don't. Wouldn't want to be a child of an onen. Their little play-thing. And we all have a little of that in our parenting. Gotta be careful of your children being your decoration. Your proof of success, your rectitude. Your accomplishment. It's all onenut. You don't want to be a child of a parent like that! You want to be a child of a parent who knows how to shame you, and then right away say "and now I want to tell you something about what you did and where it went. And grow from that. Let's grow from there." It's the exact opposite of the malbin panei chavero b'rabim." It's the exact opposite of one who brings another to shame. Tamar would never do that. She'd rather die than do that. And that's why she has this funny play in her name, that she is the beginning of the aperture to tamati. To the final level of tamati, of the perfect reflection . Perfect twinning. Perfect revelation of what reality holds. Must have been quite a personality. Must have been, because she gave birth to the other shever person, whose name is Peretz, who breaks-out! And becomes the father of David, and of malchut, and ultimately of Moshiach. Came out of that zivug. This is why this transition point is so crucial and it plays exactly into, if you remember how we saw Yehuda as the man who has hoda'a, by virtue of Leah's personal realization. But in order to get from Yehuda to a malchut which functions rightly, which is not involved in its own persona and its own mechanisms and its own kelim, you have to pass through Yosef. The belief in the other person. And the commitment to them, so that the kelim serve that, and not that they serve the kelilm. [That would be? Gotta be? 1:19:00.2] looking outside itself. Seeing itself in its own mirror-image all the time. You must pass through yonati to get to tamati correctly. And Tamar is the transition point. Ateret hayesod.
So, there was once a great man whose name was Akiva ben Yosef. Akiva, child of Yosef. And he was the origin of all the Torah sh'b'al'peh. The rabbis say. He had 5 talmidim that he had in his older age, the most famous Rebbi Shimon Bar-Yochai, but they were all great. And Rebbe Akiva told us a great secret of how to be this way. And, it's whatever happens to you, always say, whatever happens, G-d has done for the good. kol de'avid Rachmana l'tav avid: everything that G-d did he did for the good. And the Maharal says taught that you should say it, because when you say it, you channel the reality towards it. Mamash, the Maharal says this. 'Cause when you say it, so you express the full bitachon in HKB"H. And then, G-d sees you're relying on him, and he provides it. There was one place, by the way, where Yosef failed in that. And that was when he asked the sar hamashkim to tell Paro about him and get him out of jail. The rabbis say because of that this sar hamashkim forgot him, he didn't remember him, and he forgot him when he got out, and he had to spend another 2 years in jail. So the rabbis say "why, I mean, it says about the true tzadik" [pauses to look for a source]. It says about the true tzadik, ”ashrei hagever asher sam Hashem mivtacho,v'lo panav el rabin. [1:22:01.1]" The true tzadik is completely boteach on Hashem. If you lose that, then you lose kol de'avid Rachmana l'tav avid. And you lose the sense of reality as always flowing toward the good. And then you become the manipulator, the spy, the advantage taker, the, all the things where the yona can fall. But if you're reliant on G-d knowing that every place that G-d takes you is to light a greater flame, so then you get out of jail. Otherwise you stay in jail. So, though Yosef never said those words, Rebbe Akiva ben Yosef said those words. That's why when he sees the fox on Har HaBayit he laughs. That's why, when they don't let him stay in the city, and he has to sleep outside, and then the wind blows the candle out, and the cat eats the rooster, and the lion eats the donkey, he just keeps saying, and turns it out that, "it's a good thing you didn't have the candle or the rooster or the donkey or stayed in the town." 'Cause it was ransacked that night. But what was he saying when he was being burned by the Romans? When Eisav finally got the upper hand over the flame of Yosef? What was he saying then? kol de'avid Rachmana l'tav avid? Well, yeah, "my whole life I've been in pain. When will this verse come to me in fulfillment? V'ahavta et Hashem Elokeicha b'chol nafshecha, efilu notel et nafshecah. Love G-d with all of your life, even if He's taking your life? When am I gonna live that?" So, on that story, the Maharal says the most incredible thing. He says "yeah, 'cause, let me tell you a mashal." As if he doesn't know what he's talking about. "Let me tell you a mashal, you know what love is like? Love is like fire. How's love like fire? Well, you know, if a fire is burning, it's always going up. It's always going up. And no matter what you try to do to the fire, you can't make it stop going up! That's just what it is!" That's what love is. It's not like fear, where you're reacting or responding to something else. Love is when it's just the nature of what is, love of G-d, just the nature of what we are as humans beings, we have that love of G-d. The only thing that blocks it is all the blocks of shame about ourselves and embarrassment; we're not worthy and we're not deserving, and all the things that get in the way of the flame flowing. But the truth is, that we've got a flame that's always yearning for G-d. And that's called love of G-d. That's what the Maharal teaches. That's why you bring all the yisurim you want on someone who really loves G-d and -- you don't want – but, if you do, you bring all the yisurim so he just keeps loving G-d and relying on G-d and keeps connected to G-d. That's his essence. Whereas someone who lives in fear of G-d, you know, when it doesn't go good, so, "I'm outta here!" 'Cause, then the fear is not being provided the response that it wants, I mean, after all, "I'm fearing you, G-d, because all the good things I'm expecting of you. Otherwise it's not worth my while. Because, if, anyway, it goes bad for me, so then there's no reason to be in fear of You, because apparently You're not really in charge around here." Or, however it'll come out in that kind of thinking. That's because fear is a reaction. But love, the Maharal says, is an essence. That's why Rebbe Akiva, at that moment, became the burning fire. It's horrible. But, he didn't think so. And it's both, really, because we are committed to life. And then, a most astounding things happens, and we'll end with this, the astounding thing that happens: he was in the reality of "my whole life I've been yearning for this moment, waiting for it to come to realization." And then the story goes on and says "at the end his soul went out saying 'echad.'" So the Maharal asks another simple kashya; he says "wait a minute! Shouldn't his soul have gone out saying 'nafsheicha?' Will all of your soul?" That's the one he wanted to be mekayem his whole life, right? Love has to do with yearning; love has to do with longing for. Love, I add, has to do with listening. Love, in a sense, is never requited. It's never fulfilled; it's the eternal looking into the other's eyes. Because, when it arrives at its fulfillment, it's no longer love. It's just being with. Echad. Just being with the one [? 1:30:23.3]. It wasn't the time to say v'ahavta et Hashem Elokeicha b'chol nafshecha. That's a verse to yearn for. But when that verse is fulfilled, then there's only echad. There's only "at one with." "You are my completion, tamati. We are twins, ta'omati." But when you're inside that, and there's no longer any longing for and yearning for, then it's just "what is." Love is yearning, love is mashber, love is shever. Love comes out of ra'ayati. And moves through yonati. To be realized in tamati. And the ongoing and incessant back and forth. Just the real life of love of G-d and of lover. Questions, comments? Crying? Singing?
"I feel like that statement, or that place, where Rabbi Akiva was, of saying, or Yosef was, of saying 'all this is for the good.' Obviously it's great for the person who's been on the side of suffering through the not-so-necessarily-experiences-good parts. But what happens when the person on the other side, who's throwing you in a pit, or burning you, says 'don't worry, I mean, it's all for the good, like it's all,' like, isn't that kind of dangerous to…"
Yes it is! And the yonah is a cherev pifiyot – it's a two-edged sword. It's, mamash, cherev hayonah is one of the verses that the yonah has a cherev. Now, I'm sorry; I'm going to mix up images for you. It doesn't mean that, doesn't mean that the dove has a sword. Literally it means that there's a cherev hayona meaning there's a sword of destruction and desolation. Because ona'ah is desolation when it's destroying the other. That's the ona'ah of the desolation of the other. Right? When the onen moves outside of himself, it's perversion and sickness. Right? But, I'm sharing with you that that's right, I mean, those most destructive features of the onen will end up [noise of shuffling 1:35:16.6] described too. "Don't worry" – as you're being smothered under their thumb. "It's all for the good trust me! Trust me!" Right? That's what they'll always say: "Trust me." That's, "ok; I'm putting my trust in you." "Good." That's the precise perversion of the power of yona. I'm getting your trust so that I can desolate you. And one of the most horrifying usages of, abuses, of that is what you just described: "I'm [building? 1:36:01.7] you, and it's all for the good. You don't understand. Trust me. It's all for the good." That comes from a precise opposite of being boteach on Hashem on that person's part, for sure. It has nothing to do with Hashem. They may present themselves as having a lot to do with Hashem. Some of the most perverted and distorted abuse of people is empowered by the person's – who's doing it – presenting a face of being a complete One who relies on Hashem. He has infinite backing for what he's doing. And he has everything that you want. Right? "I have everything you want." So then, [whisper ? 1:36:59.2], that's where yesod ceases to be yesod. It's not a pathway through which it travels. It's all about me. Yeah, you're right; this can be extremely destructive. All these things can be the most destructive ways that people get abused and destroyed, mamash. Just 'cause it's so, it's so pnimi, because it's so much about everything we so, so want. Everything we so much want. That's why, the rabbis say, and this is a lot more destructive – there's a certain sense in which they mean that -- this is a lot more destructive than killing someone. How do I know that that's kind of what we're saying?[not sure I heard last sentence right because of shuffling noises 1:37:44.8] Not sure it's "kind of," that's hedging a little, because I haven't completely thought it through, but the simple pshat is, if someone says about you "either I kill you or you kill them," so you're not allowed to kill them; you have to die. But if you have the water, and they don't, so Rebbe Akiva says "keep the water. Keep the water. He'll die; you'll live." Because, your life comes first. But, if we're right about Rebbe Akiva, and I think we are, that he's clearly faithful also to, rather than shame someone you'll be burned, so, hmmm, so you're not allowed – it comes out equivalent, right? – you're not allowed to kill that person in shaming them; you must rather die. So, it's at least the equivalent of killing a person, that you're not allowed to do. But it may be even worse, because, after all, you don't shame them; they, in a sense, shame themselves. All you do is, "here Yehuda; isn't this yours?" In fact, the rabbis actually say that about busha. They say, e-hu d'avid l’nafshei, a person really shames himself. Right? I can't shame you! I can say all kinds of terrible things, but, in the end the shame is going to be coming from you. So, I didn't do anything to you! It's like, you did it to yourself. So, I can create a situation where you'll kill yourself, I guess, I mean, I don't know, like, do I have to give up my life rather than create a situation where you might come to kill yourself? Lo yodea. I'm not sure; it's an interesting question. I'm not exactly sure what those situations are. You know. Steal all your money. And you're one of those people who works on Wall Street. Who jumps out of the 21st floor when he loses all his stocks. And that's probably going to happen. And I steal all your money. Well, someone said to me, "if you don't steal all their money, we're going to kill you." So [?] pikuach nefesh is doche, that is, sir, and we're allowed to steal your money. Even though I know that you're likely to jump out the window. (Not you, chas v'shalom, none of us…) That person is likely to jump out the window as a result of that. But, probably, al pi halacha, I'm allowed to take the money. Because, if he jumps out the window, that's him doing it. If he says "we'll kill you if you don't push him out the window," that's something else. But if they say "we'll kill you if you don't take his money away, even though he's going to kill himself," b'pashtut, al pi halacha you're allowed to take his money away. And if he kills himself, that's his doing. But I can't do that when it comes to shaming him. If I do that, you're out of Olam Haba. Why?, if he just shamed himself? It's like a really ultimate type perversion and abuse. But it's really our only possibility for tikkun. It's our only possibility for Moshiach and tikkun is in that yona being there, invested in life, invested in other, invested in [the world? 1:41:59.5].
"In terms of the flames, like, so, like, it's sweet to say, like, or, maybe it's not sweet, maybe it's not nice to Yosef to say he got involved – got self-involved – 'cause he's just wanting the creativity. 'Cause I think there's a space also of, ok, so the plains[?] are all there and today they're covered by huge oceans with massive waves that are like, shooooo, spraying out all the time, so if you're a flame, and you're walking around like that, it's right! You have the right to be self-involved sometimes for chizuk, not like self-involved. And I think, like, when you said it, like, he just wants to be in the creative – creativity – [of the learning?] we did earlier, is like, yeah, the creativity, the flow, remembering, hearing Hashem, knowing that Hashem is just giving it to him and, you know. And really, I think sometimes in the world, like, we're so "ok, we're the flame, we gotta go out and ignite the flame and we're all flame, flame, flame." That's great, and I believe in it, and I also believe "good luck!" You're gonna be totally, you're never, unless you understand the way to come back to your creativity, real creativity, you'll totally become "the system," totally become exactly what it is the ona… you'll become everything that you don't want to be. And that, somehow we need, I don't know, I feel that, as Jews, like, in the same way, we're so clogged [clogged? Klal 1:43:36.1] out! Out! And there has to be a space where we say like "no!" Like, "what's wrong with going inside, 'cause you need the creativity." As long – it's right – ok, and I don't get stuck, whatever, it's a balance, but I feel that's a really crucial part, and I feel like Yosef, like bseder, like, 'take it! that's why you could go out, 'cause you took it and knew, like how to take that space!'"
Hmm. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. And it speaks to me on a number of levels; it speaks to me on a level of process, where, an adolescent needs to be an adolescent. Let them be adolescents. It speaks to me in the back and forth, which is so, so much, it reminds me of what we spoke of when we spoke of Avraham as being the root of all living, as being, having, the connection to the bliss of simple being. As being the place where all must begin from, and that never being forgotten. And what you're kind of bringing that down to is "and also, yeah, in the pleasure of who you are." And taking pleasure in things in a self-involved way, sometimes, at the right moment and with the right context. Someone told me the other day, I was working with a group, and she said to me, she said, like, "I'm like ruach. I flow there, I flow here, seeking truth, seeking what's real; I'm like the wind. There are some people who are fire, some people who are water, some people who are earth; I'm wind. And you know, the wind can get lost. Flowing out there and turning around somewhere else. So you know how I re-root myself in myself sometimes? I take" -- she had like this little plate of stuff on the table, "I take a little piece of cake, and I hold it in my mouth and I enjoy it.
"Why weren't Tamar and Yosef together?"
Tamar's for Yehuda's tikkun just like Yosef is for Yehuda's tikkun. In the end, it's malchut. In the end, it's David. In the end, it's the completion, and the bringing into kelim, the brining into realized, manifest reality in vessels. In the end, that's a transition, after all, Tamar and Yosef. They're not a zivug. I don't think they're a shidduch, Tamar and Yosef. They're "for." It's like Chanina ben Dosa, who was also a Yosef personality, milashon 'chen', that the rabbis say "the whole world was fed because of Chanina ben Dosa." But Chanina ben Dosa? He didn't need any food practically; he would just eat a couple of charuvim from week to week. But I don't think you put two people like that together.
"אתה אמרתה משהו על אהבת השם ויראת השם. לא [??? 1:47:56.3]"
מצוין שאת שואלת. Yirat Hashem the Maharal says in the Netiv HaAhava that, we see that first passage there, he says v'chen ahava l'shem Yitbarach, shenimshach ha'adam el Hashem Yitbarach mitzad atzmo, so too the love of G-d is the person's being drawn towards G-d from his own essential being. V'shem Yitbarach hu hashlamato. G-d is his completion, ein bitul l'davar ze, you can't take that away from him, sh'hu inyan atzmi lo, this is something which is essential to who he is, v'hashlamato, and his completion. Aval ha'yira, but fear, sh'eino yira rak shelo ya'aseh davar neged r’tzon Hamelech. What is yira? In its lower manifestation. But a person fears that he shouldn't do something against the King's will, lo shayach al davar zeh shehu atzmi al ha'adam. That's not something which is of the essential nature of what he is, mashelo ya'aseh. That which he will not do. 'Cause yira is all about not doing the wrong thing. So, not doing the wrong thing is not something which is an essential expression. It's a holding back. Ein ze hashlamato, this doesn't bring a person to completion. Hu neged ha'adam. That's something which is against the person; in other words, if I do that wrong thing, then I've violated myself. But yira is in the restraint from doing it, so it's not the essential expression of who you are. It's simply the avoidance of those things which are the negation of who you are. In avoiding those things which are the negation of who you are, you might be doing a very true and "integrous" thing. But, nevertheless, you're not doing your essence. You're simply avoiding that which would be the violation of your essence. So, now, to put it more simply, like, when you're longing for something and desiring it and going for it and moving towards it, so you're expressing the essence of who you are. When you're avoiding this or avoiding that, you're simply avoiding, you're pulling back. That's a reaction to. That's a response to. So, if that thing weren't there, I wouldn't have to have the activity of yira. If there wasn't that thing which was standing against me and in opposition to me, I wouldn't have to have yira. Yira is not an essential part of who I am; it's just the way I react to situations that might damage me. Right? Do you hear how… Like, an essential thing will bring you towards, but to react to something outside me that might hurt me, that's not an essential behavior. Rak ha'ahava hu mitzad ha'adam sheohev d’var zeh, you're love is coming from you! Mipnei kach efshar ka’asher ba al ha'adam davar sh'machbid alav, so therefore when something comes upon this person, who'se a lover, that's hard for them efshar sh'[beeping sound 1:51:24] bitul el hayira. He might actually lose his fear at that point, because "I see it's not working. Bad things are happening to me. Things are going against me." [? 1:51.34.6] hayira eina devar atmi b'hashlamato eilav[?]. Because then, you know, he'll just buck it. 'Cause he's not getting what he wanted. He's getting hurt, and the whole point of yira was to avoid getting hurt. So now, when he gets hurt, so he just drops the whole thing. OK?
"But then why do they say that the negative…"
I just want to, pull out of my drawer there; there's another…
"the negative commandments are all…" [lots of commotion here] "Sorry?"
I just wanna. There's two little things [looking for something; asking someone to get him something] Sorry, Sarah, I know you're going to ask something really good. Yeah. Go ahead.
"Why do they say keeping the negative commandments are a stronger connection than, and a deeper bonding with, Hashem, then?"
Who says that? Who says that negative commandments are a stronger bonding with Hashem?
"The ones that we don't do. Keep."
What the ones we don't do, do for us, is they protect us. And, I guess on a certain level, the rabbis say that, the rabbis say that there are 348 bones and 365 sinews, etc., etc., right? So, the Maharal says that, bones, they're called an etzem. So there is something like "atzmi." About the negative commandments. But, really, it5's a mirror image. 'Cause the negative commandments are describing what will be violated, from, like as a neg [end.]
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript:
So, I'm drawn to continue developing certain access in our relationship with HKB"H which is the access way which is Yosef. And, just to recontextualize ourselves, again and again and again, and I take no responsibility for what happens every time I recontextualize, because every time it comes out to be somewhat different context. But the primary context which we've been exploring is, I would say, sort of an overall picture of life with G-d as "in-breath, out-breath." That kind of became clear as we learned towards the end of our year, that, really, in a sense, if there's an overarching framework for our ongoing interaction with the divine, its most intimate expression and presence is in our breath. And I was blessed to find that the Admor HaZaken actually says this. As with most things that I find, I found it quite by chance; I was actually looking for something else and got an incorrect reference to a place where he discusses this, at the end of Parshas Miketz. And he says something like that.
Ok. That's for my purposes. You people, I don't know if it matters to you. To me it matters. In any case, so the – to Nachama Sheina it matters! In any case, it's there. And the most important thing for us, I would say, in that context, was this realization that G-d has a two-fold plan for us, so to speak, and that is that we learn how to let go and to be in Him and return to Him and his Oneness, and how we then are called upon to take for ourselves and breathe in and be real and alive, here, with all that that implies. And an expression of this, which I'm not sure that we explored together, is something that we do every day in saying Shema Yisrael. And that is Shema Yisrael, HaShem Elokeinu HaShem echad, is the sort of, letting go into the Oneness of G-d, that there is no other than Him, to the point in which I disappear into that. And then, we're called back by a calling of love, in V'ahavta et HaShem Elokeicha, etc, b'chol levavcha, u'bchol nafshecha, u'bchol meodeicha. That is very real and present in terms of I sense myself, I'm alive, I'm loving. And, in being a lover, so one is probably going to experience the most intense presence of one's own self. If you think about it, there's really no emotive experience as intensely personal and enlivening, exciting, "it's me, here" than love. That excitement is actually described in that pasuk, in b'chol levavcha, b'chol nafshecha, u'bchol meodeicha. Each one of those is very, very personal. Your heart, Your soul, your might. So we explored that pasuk but I think we haven't really brought out this element of it being very, very personal. V'ahavta et HaShem Elokeicha. He's your G-d. As opposed to in the Shema Yisrael, Shema Yisrael, HaShem Elokeinu, HaShem Echad. You have to access His Oneness by joining with others. He's our G-d. In the V'ahavta, so it doesn't become v'ahavtem et HaShem Elokeichem. It should have, grammatically, continued the same format of, we're talking to the klal. But no. When you talk about love, so, then, it's very personal. In vahaya im shemoa so then it becomes klal, but that's for reasons that have to do with something that we're not exploring right now.
So, in fact, there's a calling here to – so to speak – come down, come back, after the Shema Yisrael, HaShem Elokeinu, HaShem echad. And the b'chol nafshecha, requires of you – in a sense – and b'chol levavcha and b'chol meodecha requires of you a very intense realization of personhood. It's something like – I was just thinking about this – it's something like, the way the rabbis say it, you should be willing to give up your yetzer hara . To G-d. You should be willing to give up your life to G-d. You should be willing to give up all of your meod to G-d. And we explored this a lot, around David HaMelech, the meod especially, and Yaakov Avinu, if you remember. But b'chol nafshecha, which is Yitzhak, is, in a sense, a calling that you be very alive. In other words, if you're being told to give your life to G-d, and even if it's to the point of someone taking your life, so, if it's not for real, intense, meaningful, developed, so then, how much meaning does it have to give up your life to G-d if your life is really just a shambles that you don't relate to with any seriousness. Really. I say this with that kind of harshness 'cause I actually got this from my wife when we were going out; I remember, in a marvelous moment, I told her, like, I want to give myself over to her. She looked at me and she said "who do you think you are?" Like, "so what?" No, it was something which I think was right in place, in other words, there's a certain gaiva , there's a certain ga'ava that comes with "I'm giving myself over," like "who are you? What have you made yourself into? What have you become? What is this 'give yourself over,' have you really built something of a self such that to give it over in love would be a meaningful act?" Anyhow, I can be amused by it now. But the sense of that in the pasuk is very strong, to me, v'ahavta et HaShem Elokeicha … b'chol nafshecha, it really means that, make something of yourself. And in that, then, giving it over to HKB"H and being drawn towards Him, yesh b'ze. Of course, everyone is something; I don't mean to belittle anyone. And everyone has their own context for defining what it means to be a realized human being; everyone has a totally different context. It's not like, if you're not a yuppy lawyer on Wall Street, though I don't know if that's even a very honorable place to be, right now, but, whatever, that's not what I'm talking about "being something." It can be in any, any context. But the point is that I've worked, I've realized something.
So this is just another illustration, I guess, of this "in-breath, out-breath" of letting go and coming back, which is the primary framework of so much of what we've spoken. And it actually is the beginning of a pasuk which we explored greatly as our map, and that that is the pasuk which says Kol Dodi dofek. Pitchi li achoti, ra'ayati, yonati, tamati. Now, we spent a lot of time on the end of the pasuk, on achoti, ra'ayati, yonati, tamati. But I neglected to inform us that the beginning of the pasuk is everything that I just spoke about. Because the literal meaning of kol dodi dofek is that "I hear the sound of my lover pounding." Or beating. And, knocking on the door. So, the word that's chosen is a word which actually is the word for the heartbeat. So, I feel my lover pounding, I feel my lover beating. That's like a whole other level of intimacy with this bringing-in, letting-go, bringing-in, letting-go, which is all the time going on in our hearts. And, so then when that creates the actual framework for then the achoti, ra'ayati, yonati, tamati that we spent so much time in exploring. I just wanted to give that over, and that was really our context, and we [saw with?] through Avraham many, many different aspects of Avraham as achoti, and many, many aspects of Yitzhak as , many aspects of Yitzhak as ra'ayati, and many aspects of Yaakov as tamati, primarily as the tam. And then we saw him as the ta'om in mirroring reality, and that is the ta'om in experiencing the beauty of reality, and that's pretty much where we were last time. And the beauty and the relationship with beauty cacha lo b'olamo. I simply just reflected and mirrored it. And, yonati, which is the, is a connector, which is the connection of Yosef. And, today, is yesod, yesod sh'b'hod; it's one of the days of Yosef, as they appear, the the sfirat Ha'omer. So today and next week too, we'll touch upon him and what he brings as the yona. We're on board? I just want to point something else out just briefly: tamati is actually, plays a dual role. Because it's, it is a ta'om, it is a twin. So tamati comes after ra'ayati, and then there's yonati, and then, in a sense, there's another tamati, which isn't in the pasuk, but the malchut is the yona coming in to the tama. I don't know how much these structures matter to you people, but if they do, just so you understand that the malchut is also a ta'am. Tiferet and malchut, would you like me to explain that a little, or is that… You don't need that, right? That's for me, just to have it all worked out.
”If you want."
- I see. OK. I'll put it in as a footnote. I don't need to say it. But it works very beautifully, for those who like these kinds of structures. Meital, do you want to ask a question?
"... בהתחלה של המשפט, של קול דודי דופק ... שבעצם היא ה[?] לו, לא? כאילו, זה שהדלת פתוחה וצריך להגיד לה "תפתחי," זה ה[13:34:5 ?]
שומע. נשאיר את זה, בטמיעה. כן.
- So, we'll sing a little first, and then we'll connect to something in Yosef HaTzadik as the yonah. And we'll be looking at some psukim also from Breishit. [14:16 - 18:52, nigun]
The first time that the word Yosef, or mosif, yosaf appears in the Torah, is by Yosef. He's the first appearance of there being something which is an addition. That is experienced as an addition, and is actually waiting for the next level to happen. Yosef is a son who's born to a woman who's been awaiting her child in great anticipation and anxiety. And, when he's finally born, so the only thing that she can say is yosif li ben acher. That G-d should grant that I should have another child. And so, Yosef is actually born into a reality in which he is – so to speak – nothing of his own. He's only there as one who is – in a sense – a passageway for something else to appear. As names are, so his name actually then really defines for him what it is that his life is now going to be composed of, and that is that he's going to be a pathway and a passageway for the next son. For the next son: yosif li ben acher. And, indeed, we find this characteristic of Yosef that he's always stepping out and going beyond; he's always the one who is in movement to a place that is beyond himself. And his very mode of revelation or recognition to his brothers, for instance, when he literally exposes himself to them, so, the way in which he identifies himself to them is by showing them that he has a brit mila, that they were having difficulty in the meeting with him, and for all kinds of reasons, obviously including their embarrassment over what they had done, and so, that's how he indicates to them – we can just leave the physicality of it aside – but he's like, actually, indicating to them that he's not someone who is stuck inside of a box; basically, an orla is an enclosure, an orla is a [block?], an orla is a box. "I'm not. And I reach out to you. " And in that reaching out, so he then, is able to meet them. So, I'm just kinda looking, I'm interested in looking at the encasing of Yosef's prime moments, so in his life, he's the one who's passing on to, and the passageway towards. And the one, therefore, who is always focused on to make contact. If you look at the way Rachel actually names him, so she says two things: she says, not only about him that yosif li ben acher, but she says another thing too, and that is asaf Elohim et cherpati. That G-d has gathered in my shame. In giving me this child. Asaf HaShem et cherpati. As Rashi explains, "I was a despised and disparaged woman who was barren. And people were saying about me that I would be lost to a Eisav if I couldn't bring a child to Yaakov." So, then when she calls him his name, so the word ”Yosef" includes both this aspect of asaf – that my cherpa has been gathered in – and also this aspect of Yosef, that there's another child who's going to be added to me. Yosif HaShem li ben acher. This is a very, very deep thing about Yosef, and it teaches us – if we begin with his name – it teaches us that he actually lives on two different elements that are reflected through him. One is the prevention of shame, the end of shame. Or, the act takes away the shame and disparagement of another. His being born relieved his mother of her lowliness, of her embarrassment. And the other is that he's a pathway for others to appear. And these are mamash, as we're going to see, the two aspects of the way of yesod. Because, what Yosef does, through his entire life, is he defines situations in which people's disparagement and dimunition [should say: diminution!], their cherpa is relieved. And they are given a place of significance and honor. And we'll see how that works with him. And, on the other hand, he does it – so to speak – completely selflessly. In which he's simply a passageway for other things to appear. And for the other to appear in his fullness.
It's not, perhaps, the way we're used to recognizing him, and so I want to give illustrations from stories about him, and the way he lives with his brothers and deals with the tremendous challenges which he deals with. But before we get there I just want to point out a few other things about how he functions in people's lives. I would say one of the big functions that Yosef has, is he shakes things up. He doesn't leave things as they are! And they way where that happens, most significantly, I would say, in the story in the Chumash, is when Yosef actually undoes Yaakov's plan leshev b'shalvah. For instance, right, in the beginning of Parshas Vayeshev after Yaakov's gone through all the stuff he's gone through, so, the rabbis say, vyeshev Yaakov b'eretz megurei aviv; he's come back home, everything should really be for good now, and for comfort, and he can finally be complacent with what he has, so that the rabbis really pick up the tenor of the verse vyeshev Yaakov b'eretz megurei aviv in the place his Dad had lived too. Yeah, it's like, "come back home," come back into the bosom of his parents. You know, he's done with all that being out there stuff. And then, ele toldot Yaakov, Yosef. And then, here come the generations of Yaakov. Who are the generations of Yaakov? Or, who are the unfoldings and the birthings of Yaakov? Yosef.
Yeah, what about the other 11 sons and daughter that he has? No, the toldot of Yaakov are Yosef. And, in fact, the rabbis have all kinds of issues around how to interpret that verse. But, we can suffice it to say that the birthing of Yaakov – whatever you mean by that – the unfolding of Yaakov are through Yosef. But the point is, the unfolding of Yaakov come through Yosef. And what Yosef does, in his rather, what would you call it, brazen and adolescent way, is, he shakes everything up. That's really what he does. He's the roeh et chatzav b'tzoen, he's out there with his brothers, v'hu na'ar; he's a youth. You know you're in trouble; you've got an adolescent in the house. They're going to shake things up; that's just what they do. The very word itself, naar, actually, means to "shake off," hitna'ari, lhitna'er is to shake off. They don't stay put. That's the primary drive. And his impact for Yaakov is to shake things up. And then from there, Rashi says, Kafatz alav rogzo shel Yosef. You thought that you were now going to be sitting complacent? Let me show you what life is really about. I'm going to basically "sic" Yosef on you. Kafatz alav rogzo shel Yosef, Yosef and all of the "shake up" that Yosef is, is now going to shake everything up for you.
So Yaakov doesn't get a minute of peace. Because of Yosef. He's like the essence and element of adolescence. That really is a transition point that is not for itself. The adolescents know that; they tell you that too! Like, they're always saying "it's a very close experience for me right now." They're always saying to you "don't worry; I'll do teshuva later. Don't worry; I'll make it up later. Let me have fun now!" But that "nowness" is excused by their living always in a consciousness that this is just a passage point. "I'm just passing through, in my being now a ben 17 shana. In my being 17 years old. That's all I am; it's just a passageway." So, that becomes the whole starting point of the story of Yaakov's final chapter in his life, which is the beginning of the real making of the Jewish people. So, that's just another illustration of his being the one who shakes things up. But, another thing that is about Yosef is in his being a pathway and a channel for things; so Yosef is also quite powerfully the one is the dreamer. And, here, is a sense of dreaming which belongs exactly there, because, a person who dreams a real dream, on a certain level has an experience of his life as being one in which things are being channeled through him. [31:48.7 ?] dream comes. You know, there's a lot of psychological overlay that we have, and that Chazal also have, about how dreams can be manipulated, and dreams can actually just be an expression of what you think of yourself, etc. And, in a profound sense, that has to do with the dynamic relationship between what we choose and who we are and what we are sent here to do and what is being channeled through us. And that complex interaction – we'll have to save it for another time – but, right now I just want to appreciate how a person whose whole reality is yosif li ben acher is all and there's something else coming, is going to be a great dreamer: there's something else coming! Right? I'm not staying where things are, and my experience of it also is something which is really sort of flowing through me. It's not like – in telling his brothers – it's not like he's standing up to them and taunting them with it: it's just the way it is. It's not something that I'm choosing; it's not something that I'm making. It's just the way it is. And it's being passed through me. So that also makes him not only available to his own dreams, but, actually, therefore makes him available to other people's dreams. Because a person who is a dreamer is also one who is able to connect to the place of dreaming in a selfless way. The more caught up you are in your own opinions, predispositions, prejudgments, etc., so the less you're going to be able to interpret someone else's dream. You can't hear their dream if you're concerned with yourself. But when you become a channel, so then you can hear their dream and hear what its real message is. And so he's able to be a poter chalomot. By the way, the vocalization in Hebrew, which is called a cholam, is actually written – it seems to me – like a dreamer. A cholam is written like a vav with a dot on top of it. That's a cholam. It's like, an opening to something which is a super-consciousness, or an opening which is something which is that ball is going to now come down and [34:31.6 noise blocks word] the vav. Yosef, as yesod is a shuruk, according to the kabala. Which is also a vav with a dot alongside it. And in that you really get a very strong sense about the difference between Yosef and Yaakov. Shuruk. Yosef, and Yaakov are the cholom and the shuruk. Yaakov is the first dreamer in the Torah. But Yosef is the first one who relates his dreams. In other words, his dreaming, he views or experiences as something which needs to be given out. Yaakov doesn't relate his dream to anyone. He just sees the malachim olim v'yordim and HaShem nitzav alav, but Yosef shares his dreams. And in sharing his dreams he becomes the revelation of what the real yesod is, as the one who can dream from above and have it pass through him and then passed on to another. Not only does it get passed on to another, but it becomes realized in the external reality. He's also the only one who we have among the Avot whose dream becomes manifest. These are very powerful things. It's not happenstance that all these should be involved with him. And he therefore also is one who is always relating to reality as something which is being dreamed into another realization – another level of realization.
There's another aspect of Yosef and [the?] yesod, which is that he is the man of peace. Which also sounds really, uh, not characteristic of him in the sense that he seems to stir up so much trouble. But, in fact, his father sends him to his brothers on a very profound mission, one which apparently he was not able to accomplish in his life. And that is, after all this trouble-making, and all of this problematic, he tells Yosef Lech na u're'eh et shlom acheicha. Go now and see the peace of your brothers. And anyone who looks at the Chumash for the word shalom will discover that its first appearance is here. Now that's an important word! And in the kabala yesod is shalom. Apparently only Yosef is going to be the only one who is able to bring about the shalom achav. And at great sacrifice to himself. 'Cause it's obvious to anyone reading the story, Yosef is quite well aware of what his brothers think of him; certainly his father is also quite well aware of what the brothers think of him. And so to send him to where the brothers are – I mean now, really, lech na u're'eh et shlom acheicha – just find out how they're doing? I mean, you're going to send your beloved son of Rachel out there to find out how they're doing? There are no servants around? There's no one else to take care of this? And, he's sent, and his whole task becomes from then on the fulfillment of his father's request of lech na u're'eh et shlom acheicha . The coalescing point of that is again, when he exposes himself to his brothers, if you listen carefully to what he basically tells them has come about by virtue of all that's taken place, so Yosef tells them after he's taken them through all that he's taken them through, so he gets everyone out of the room, and then he starts to cry. And Yosef tells his brothers, it says, "I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?" So, his brothers, they couldn't answer him; they were too afraid – nivhalu mipanav. So then Yosef says to his brothers, Gishu na elai. "Come close to me." And then he says Ani Yosef achichem. "I am Yosef your brother." Sh'machartem oti Mitzrayma. Then they were able to speak to him. So basically what Yosef had done is he's shifted the declaration of Ani Yosef, which throws them away, "Is my father still alive?" which excludes them, to "I am Yosef your brother." In a sense that this is what all of this has been about, is making Yosef your brother. So this element of Yosef, as the seeker of peace, becomes, it's first success, so to speak, is when he exposes himself to them and reveals to them that he has really been here as Yosef their brother. Not as Yosef, his father's only son. But he, he, in a sense, needed to have taught them that, in order to accomplish what it was that his father sent him out to do, which was exactly that. Which was lech na u're'eh et shlom acheicha. "Go and find the peace of your brothers." And going to find the peace of your brothers has been really what the entire story was about, that is, this other power of yesod. Which clearly has to do with connecting with what is beyond and finding it as being part of the greater whole. And that is really what shalom does, right? When we're in a situation in which there are things which seem to be, so to speak, excluded from the circle, excluded from the possibility of inclusion, so making peace with them, so to speak, is bringing them inside. Bringing them into the circle. Bringing them into brotherhood. And, it's very profoundly related to this kind of an experiencing life as there being something else which is waiting, which is beyond, which I am aspiring towards, looking forward to, longing for. Which is Yosef's power. So these are – I'm just kinda giving us, because it's a little bit new, I want to give us some of the – before you can paint a picture you need to begin to draw the lines. So these are some of the elements of who Yosef is, as asaf li et cherpati; he's the one who protects from shame. Yosif li ben acher ; he's the one who's a channel-way for new things to come. And, he's the man of peace – of shalom – which is going to be creating the interconnection between this "I relieve you of your shame" and "I come as a channel for something new." And it has to do with relating to that which is outside oneself in a way, in a path, of honor, and of desire, for that connection.
So, what I'd like to do is seek illustrations for us of this in [?] stories, like we saw, in Avraham, in Yitzhak and in Yaakov. One thing which is another starting point, which is, sort of the easiest way to begin, especially if we're going to be talking about yesod, which means "foundation," is how Yaakov responds to Yosef when he's born. It's quite fascinating. Because the rabbis say that as soon as Yosef was born, so, how does Yaakov respond? We already heard how Rachel responds. She's the one who calls him by his name. So all that we heard now was Rachel's experience of Yosef, of who he is. But Yaakov, kasher yalda Rachel et Yosef, when Rachel gave birth to Yosef, v'yomer Yaakov el Avraham 'shalcheni v'elcha el mekomi u'le'artzi.' I'm getting' outta here. Send me away. So you see how perfect this is; Yosef has now been born, so Yaakov's immediate response to Yosef is "I'm going out; I'm not staying where I am. I'm coming now to connect to new possibilities and new realities, which weren't there before." So this aspect of Yosef becomes reflected there, and Rashi says on that, he says, "well, what actually became possible for Yaakov now, was to go back to Eretz Yisrael, because now he can meet Eisav." And his meeting of Eisav is mishenolad sitno shel Eisav – now the one who is actually who stands in opposition to Eisav – I'm now able to go back. As it says, and it’s a very important verse about Yosef, and it says in Ovadia the prophet, v'haya beit Yaakov esh, that Beit Yaakov is a fire, and Beit Yosef is a lahava: Beit Yosef is a flame. U'beit Eisav l'kash. And the house of Eisav is straw. Esh b'lo lahava ein lo sholet lo merachok. A fire without a flame, doesn't reach out. Now that there's Yosef, so now the fire will reach out, as a flame.
Now, whatever we do with the particular relationship that Yaakov is concerned with right now, which is with his brother Eisav, which would take us into great complexity in terms of the relationship between Yosef and Eisav, which perhaps we'll touch upon in the not-too-distant future, but the point is there's an image now. You see, now, I'm looking for a picture. That we can have and we can walk with, with Yosef. Yosef's primary depiction in Yaakov's mind is of a flame. Yosef is the flame. Now this is particularly exciting for me on the day which is yesod sh'bhod. Because hod is all about the fire. We just saw that on Lag B'Omer, I hope. Which is hod sheb'od, or – everyone lighting fires. We talked about this once, way back when. We were talking about Aharon HaKohen, and the power of hod which is a power of fire. Remember that? We did. Ok. In any case, we'll get back to it. No, I like it when people don't remember what I said – then I get to say it again! But, we'll put it aside right now, and just point out that with hod being the fire, so Yosef is the flame. I'm just orienting us in terms of the particular time we're sitting in right now, which is the flame of the fire. That's yesod sh'b'hod. In any case, you see that Yaakov's experience of Yosef right away is that, if I have been the fire, so now you can be the flame. Right? Which, again, is this image of him reaching out and touching that which is beyond him. There's another aspect of that also. That is, like a fire is, never satisfied with what is, so is Yosef; in other words, Yosef is going out and he's burning everything up. He's a fire-maker. He'll light other people's fires, and that's what he does. On all levels. He's like the song "Come on baby, Light my Fire?" Right? Is mamash a Yosef song, it's a – you know, I expect you to light my fire! That's what it is. But this aspect of lighting other people's fires, which is the aspect of Yosef, is also, on another level, his ongoing and constant renewal . I fire doesn't stay still for a number of reasons, but one of them is that a flame is not a constant. By its very definition – and this is what makes it so hard to hold on --what is fire anyway? Well, fire is simply the releasing of the energy which is contained. It's the opening up of potentialities which are contained within this and opening it up. And then the flame is reaching that [50:49 ?] and doing it to someone else. It's this— perhaps I should clarify the image, we're perhaps used to fire as being a destructive thing – but when we relate to fire as a constructive thing, so basically what fire is doing, the very process of the fire is that, what's happening, is there are these tremendous potentialities which are contained within the thing which is about to be ignited of energy, which is being held in a particular form, it's true, and we like that form. Like this table, or this room. Or our bodies, or whatever it might be that's about to be lit on fire. But when it's lit on fire, so this tremendous energies which are pent up inside, that material which now become released into light! So that actually what has been shown by the fire are these tremendous possibilities which have been laying latent so to speak within this piece of wood. It's just a darn piece of wood, right? Which is, you know, useful for us as it is, and we want to hold it in its place so that it should continue to function here and serve our needs in this current condition. But if this table is going to become something else, its quickest way to becoming something else is to light it on fire. And then its energy will be released, which will find, eventually, when it slows down to the right speed or whatever, will find eventually a path to becoming rematerialized. And whatever ashes are left will find their way back into the ground, and be grown again into a plant and be eaten by an animal and go through a different path and serve a different function in G-d's great cosmos, in a way which will never be lost, because there is the law of the conservation of energy and, really, of matter. It's all conserved within. But what will happen and is, and enough being a table! Bam! Turn you into something else and release these energies which are within you. So, this flame then becomes not only a reaching out to touch another in a way in which they've become touched, but in a way in which they become realized. And awakened to their possibilities and their potentialities. This is really, in a sense, what a dreamer does. Not only about the flame, the fire that they have inside, which is really what all of our dreams our, a dreaming fire inside, like "what's your dream? Do you want to hear my dream?" Yeah, like, what would it be if we had all the money in the world you needed, and all the help you could possibly imagine, and all the circumstances that would make it possible, "tell me your dream!" If there were no conditions on it, "wow! really? Like to talk?" "Yeah!" That's, you know, when you touch that in the right way, that's when you start seeing people light up. And they light up because their fire starts to burn. That's really what happens! But that kind of a lit fire is something which we can sort of generate sometimes in ourselves, but it really gets lit by another, and it can really truthfully only be lit by another who is himself also a dreamer. So Yosef is also the one who has the power to light other people's fires. That kind of a lighting, in the way he contacts other people, he also causes them to dream. I really believe that it's because Yosef was around that Pharaoh had his dreams. It's because Yosef was around that those people in the prison had their dreams. Whenever Yosef is around people start to dream. And their fires starts to burn and to open up. It's great to be around people like that. They can also become very disconcerting, because [they? You?] can become very frustrated about all the dreams and the minimal realization sometimes of those dreams. But those are the people, who, if you want to be in a place of transition, of moving from one place to another, which is the place of yesod and its depth, when you're letting go of the current form: so then you want to be touched by someone who's going to light your fire. And this Yosef does; he's the aspect of the fire which is the burning, which is able to light other people's fires. What happens to Eisav, who is the exact opposite of a dreamer, is that he just burns up and dissipates. But if he's attached to someone with whom there's going to be a real relationship so then that real relationship will become one in which that person becomes ignited and alive and just a burning fire and a flame. With all those potentialities released. So, this very beautiful image of Yosef also then becomes an image for us in his function as someone – and it's almost ironic – but as someone who can bring people peace. Bring peace among people. And, you actually can hear this in Yosef's voice, when, at the very end of his interaction with his brothers, when he finally accomplishes what his father has contracted him to do, bring peace to this family, bring peace to this house, bring peace to these brothers, so, Yosef actually says to them this image. In other words, this is his own self-awareness, his own self-consciousness which is something that Yaakov is aware of. And it happens, after Yaakov leaves the scene and dies, so then the brothers come to Yosef in fear. And they come to Yosef and they say to him, basically they say to him a – it's not exactly the truth. They say to him, you know, before Dad died, so he commanded something which we were supposed to pass on to you. (This is in Chapter 50 verse 15 on.) And, he said, "Tell Yosef the following, 'Please forgive your brothers for all of the evil that they did to you, 'cause they have caused you great harm. Now, please forgive them, these servants of the Lord of your father.'" And Yosef cried as they spoke to him. And then they go and they fall before him, and they say "we are now your slaves." And Yosef says to them "don't be afraid. Am I instead of G-d? What you thought was going to be evil G-d has turned into good, in order to do to you all that He has done so that I should be able to bring you life." This is a great opportunity to see Yosef in his own personal conception and how a man of yesod actually experiences himself in life. "Now, don't be afraid; I will continue to provide you with all that you need, as the giver of life," which is who Yosef is.
So, the verse goes on, and then says, "And he calmed them, and he spoke to their hearts." Ok. He calmed them. And he consoled them. But how is he speaking to their hearts? So, the Chachamim wonder, how, well, what was he saying to their hearts? So, listen to what he said to them, he said to them things that would sit well in their hearts. And said to them, "you know, 10 candles can't put out 1 candle, so how could 1 candle put out 10?" That's it. It's from the Talmud in Megilla. 10 candles, they cannot put out 1 candle, so – I'll make it a little more explicit now – so could 1 candle put out 10? And then they're done.
Now, what is the meaning of that? What is he saying? "See you [are?] 10 candles. You couldn't put out one candle, could you? 'Cause you know what happens? When 10 candles try to put out 1 candle? The flame just gets bigger. So could 1 candle put out 10? You tried to harm me, to destroy me, but instead my light became greater. Were I to come against you, would I be able to destroy you? Your light would only become greater!" What a perfect image! [Of?] someone whose whole experience of life is as a flame. "The only thing that I could possibly do" – he experiences others that way also – "the only thing that I could possibly do? In coming in contact with you? Is to be a flame that would light your fire even brighter. Because you too are fires that are burning." And that's exactly what G-d did – it's just the perfect image – exactly what G-d did: "everything that you thought was going to be evil to me, [?] the contact that you were having with me that you thought was going to undo me, all it did was light my fire. I could never have burned this brightly if it hadn't been for all that you caused me. I could never have been the Yosef who would bring food to the entire planet, who would bring a whole new reality into being, who would really be the source for this people now going into an exile which will produce them into becoming the consciousness on the planet of the One G-d. It wouldn't have happened if it hadn't been for what you did to me, throwing me down into the dark pit. Throwing me down into the dark pit. And all those places of darkness were just ways in which my fire was being lit even brighter." It's mamash – can you imagine experiencing all others like that? You wouldn't want anything but relationship, because everyone you come in contact with is simply another piece of the flame that's going to be lighting you even more brightly. And every contact you have with them is going to be nothing but igniting [1:02:55.9 everything?] more brightly. This is a total consciousness in which there's nothing but the continued growth and bringing out of potentialities which lay embedded in our environment and in our arena of living, which is just contact with [that?] is lighting it even brighter and brighter and brighter and brighter. So he mamash speaks to them, and these are his final words to his brothers, that's the end. This is basically where Breishit ends. He's done. These are his last words. And then it says "and Yosef lived 110 years." And that was it; and he saw more children, etc., etc. The story's over. This is the end of Breishit. This is the end of the book, which the Tikkunei Zohar says is the book of brit esh. Of the Covenant of Fire. It's the first rewriting of the first word of the Torah breishit, whose letters are brit esh. The brit esh of Sefer Breishit ends with Yosef making a covenant of fire. And if you thought a covenant of fire is something which sounds destructive and threatening, no! Well, that would depend really, on the way in which you live it! Because if you live it as something "I must hold on to the forms I have; I've gotta hold tight on to being a table. That's what I am! That's my identity! I can't give that up!" so then your meeting with someone like that is gonna be shvirat hakelim. It's going to be breaking your vessels and you might not survive it and you might not like people like that, and, in fact, that's the kind of person – you know what? If what your commitment is to is to reality "just as it is," to making structures that hold things in place, you don't want a dreamer around. You don't want a flame-guy around. He's a troublemaker. And, in fact, the entire interrelationship between Yosef and his brothers is largely defined by their chieftain, who is Yehuda, who is the man, who is the one, who is entrusted, really, with creating a structure, creating a kingdom. Creating something that's going to hold all this together.
In fact, when Yosef meets them, so he meets – his father sends him out – he meets a man who's standing near Shechem, and he asks him, the man asks him "what are you looking for?" And so, he says, "well, I'm looking for my brothers." Very poignant verse. "I'm looking for my brothers." So he says, "well, they've gone to Dotan." So you know what Rashi says? On that – they've gone to Dotan. They've gone to da'at. They've become religious. Better be careful. Religious not in the – religious in the real meaning of the term. You know, like, they keep the rules. They're keeping-the-rules people. They're the ones who guard the givens. So, understand what you're getting into, Yosef. And in fact, as soon as they see him the first thing they say is [tone of dismay] "here he comes. The dreamer. He's the one we want to get rid of. He's the one who's going to shake things up." So their first experience of this flame is not a particularly positive one. And causes them to become content to murder him. And then to sell him into slavery. This is not a simple matter. Nor is it a – it's like not a simple matter in our relationship with others, nor is it a simple matter in our relationship within ourselves. We're always are faced, struggling, with the flame of reaching out in to the farther regions, and what happens when we do that, and what happens when others touch us there. But the world of Yosef and the world of yesod will be one which is convinced and committed to that the other one being touched will burst into a most glorious fire, which will then allow a re-embodying on an even higher and more enlightened form. This becomes also, the aspect of Yosef not only [in his? as a?] flame, but also in his – there's another piece here – in his making peace. His making shalom. So now we've got this little piece of the "scope" of Yosef. So I want to tell you something which is like one of the simplest things in life, about how we do that with others. And I'm going to say this in the simplest way, really what happens, the way to light another person's fire, is by believing in them. Believing in them. Being committed to them. That's Yosef's reliability, his ne'emanut. That's why Yosef would never come between, in a relationship, between a man and a woman, between a husband and a wife. That's why his primary test and transition and transformation comes by virtue of the question of relationship. And the honoring of relationship. Because in his honoring relationship he defines it all.
So. [long pause to collect thoughts] There's like, 4 different avenues. You know what's the opposite of a person who's like this? Who's a flame? Who's always seeking contact with what's out there, because he just keeps adding fire – there's more and more fire? The opposite of this is, mamash, like, an enlightener. I think on a certain level they're also, like Yosef is, in as much as they're involved in relation and connecting, they're kinda lonely. Alone. A person who has a lot of dreams that way can become very much alone. Yosef is actually n’zir eichav, he stands apart from his brothers. But there are two ways of standing apart. And this is something else that Yosef seeks to teach his brothers. That big scene, when Yosef first meets them, he does something like totally weird. And that is that – I'm talking about now when Yosef meets his brothers for the first time when they've come to Egypt to collect food. So that whole story begins with the famine coming, and then it says that (in the beginning of chapter 42) v'yar Yaakov ki yesh shever b'Mitzrayim . This is kind of a funny word. Shever in Hebrew means "food," or something that's going to be sold. But shever also means breakage. A mashber is a catastrophe in which there's been breakage. And a mashber is also where when a woman gives birth. The birthing stone is called the mashber. So Yaakov sees there's a shever in Mitzrayim. Very, very laden word. And he tells his children lama titra'u. Which literally means "How come you're just standing around looking at yourselves?" How come you're just standing there and looking at yourselves? He says, "I heard that there's shever in Mitrayim." Now, at the beginning of the chapter it said Yaakov saw that there's shever in Mitrayim. He's seen it. But he tells them "I've heard it." Ok. That there's shever in Mitrayim. "Go down there and get us some food, so we'll live and not die." So the brothers go down and there's some very, very rich elements here in this story – and they come before Yosef. Yosef, of course, he recognizes them, but they didn't recognize him. And then he starts to talk to them. And what he says to them is, after he remembers his dream, what he says to them is "you're spies. You're spies. You've come to see the erva, the indecent exposure, the shame of this land. Basically you've come here to seek out the weak points of this land. So that you can take advantage of it." So they say to him "no, no, no: that's not true! We've come to get food! We're all the sons of one father. All the sons of one man. We're really being honest with you. We are brothers. We're not slaves [meant "spies?"]." So Yosef says to them "Uh-uh-uh. – [goes back and changes slaves to spies] "We're brothers, we're not spies." So Yosef says "uhhh, you're spies." "no, no! We're brothers!" "No, you are spies." I mean, you'd think that there should be a little guy on the side who says well, I mean, brothers can be spies! It's not as if they're in an argument! About something. But apparently, they are! "Either you're spies, or you're brothers. You know what? You go back and you bring that other brother of yours, and you prove to me that you're brothers!" "Huh? How's that going to prove that we're not spies?" Well, doesn't matter, right? Now that, is totally "out there." Unless Yosef is actually teaching them something about two different paths in living, and they are the path of the flame. And, what is really the opposite of the path of the flame, in terms of personal expression, and that is the path of the spy. Because the spy is the advantage-taker. The spy has absolutely no interest in you and your marvelous potentialities and your flame that waits to be exposed. And, as my mother would say[1:17:41.6 ahnes g'matuch???] like, a hole in the head. Doesn't care about any of that. What a spy cares about is one thing only, and that is "what advantage can I take of this situation?" A spy stands completely outside the relationship. Cannot enter a relationship. That's when spies fall, right? That's always the tension in the spy flicks, is he going to fall for the girl, or is he not going to fall for the girl? If he falls for the girl so then his cover is going to be blown. Right? If he really falls in love with her. 'Cause spies cannot fall in love. 'Cause once a spy has fallen in love so he becomes your brother. He becomes connected. And then he's in trouble. The only way for you to be able to live as an advantage-taker, is to live outside: standing and spying the situation out. The only thing you're looking for is erva, and it's a sexual term also. You're just looking for the advantage taking. "No, no, we're brothers!" Almost as if, subconsciously, they recognize what the conversation is about. Right? "We're brothers, we're not spies," he's like mamash got them in it. That "you're spies." Because Yosef is the man who's there to teach them brotherhood. Which he will in the end. He's the one who's there to teach them the opposite of blockage, of orlah. He's the one who's there to teach them what it really means to contact life, and what it means to really contact life is to be committed to life in a way that all you are there for is for the igniting of it so that it become more and more enlightened. That it become more and more realized. That's the only reason to be here, is to bring life to become more and more enlightened and more and more realized. Is to light it on fire! The last thing to do, that a spy wants, is to light it on fire, because all the spy is there for is to see things as they are and to discover their weakness, so that advantage can be taken of them. Rather than they be given the opportunity to live in their own freedom and expression. [1:19:53.6?] mamash speaking to people that Yaakov described at the very beginning, which was lama titra'u? All you people are looking at is yourselves. It's the reflexive in Hebrew. For looking. What do you mean to look "at yourselves?" It's completely the opposite of someone who's looking to contact reality in a way in which is going to be adding light and adding enlightenment for both of us! When one candle touches another it's for both of us. But it's only for both of us if we do it in a selfless way. Because if all you're after is that your light should be greater, so then you become a spy. How can I get the most out of this situation? How can I get the most out of you? But if you're living in the situation and the relationship in which it's not about "how can I get the most out of you," it's about how can we both become a greater light, and that's the only way we can become a greater light. And this is a secret which we all forget as we move through life; this is the great secret of living: the only way that I'm going to become fully expressed is by being committed to your full expression. That's, it's won't happen any other way because when I lose that commitment to your full expression, so then all I have is myself! I won't become more! I might become, you know, more of myself! But I won't become truly more; there will not be any Yosef. There will not be any tosefet. And the pathway to that is in this great belief in the other. The great emuna and the great ne'emanut to what they have to bring. The great connection to that place which is that burning flame that's inside them. And this is so marvelously so that, to be standing there espying the advantage, is to be precisely the opposite of that one who touches the flame of the other. It's dangerous for that other one. To become alive. It's dangerous for that other one to – so to speak – to give birth. The erva and the [? 1:22:11.4] aspect of it is very, very profound there. This is why, also, Yosef and his reflection on that, with them, so he reveals this aspect of them to them and that begins their process of tikkun of moving from being meraglim to becoming achim, [?] achim.
You can see how strongly it would be that the last thing in the world that Yosef would want would be to shame another. To expose their cherpa, to expose their erva. And we all have it. But the last thing in the world that Yosef would want would be to shame another. The other aspect of Yosef that we've been talking about, which we just started to touch, again, is asaf et cherpati -- that he's "gathered in my shame." And, that's [what] Rachel says. So you know there's a story that seems to be completely out of place in the Chumash, in the context of Yosef, and that is the story of Yehuda and Tamar. Because after Yosef is sold into slavery and before we are given the whole story of Yosef and his standing up to the temptation of eshet Potifar, so we have the story of Yehuda, in a sense, not standing up to the temptation. Of a whore. And in that we're actually meeting a kind of a clear juxtaposition, which is, in a sense, preparation for the story of Yosef and Potifar's wife, by seeing what's the nature of the behavior of the man who represents – sort of – the "rules," the institutionalization of things, the solidity of things? The king. What happens to him? And, of all the pain around that story, what happens to him is, in a sense – it's not quite the same, obviously as an eshet ish – but, you know, it doesn't particularly reflect well, that story. Whatever we're going to do to it to soften it. And, the story is actually about a very particular series of events. We can't ignore that this woman Tamar, who was married to Yehuda's child, actually becomes the subject of the first, well, not the first, the subject of a sexual behavior which is attempting to prevent her from becoming pregnant. And that's what the Chumash describes, that she doesn't have children because the man with her is not giving her seed. The, one of the sons of Yehuda, is called Er, which means "awake," and the other is Onan, which basically means "caught up in his own power." On, in Hebrew, is "power." Caught up in his own power. Onan is. That becomes, in Hebrew, actually the word – oneinut – is the word for masturbastion. It's completely self-contained. So this is who she's married to. These are the children of Yehuda. Not a very pretty picture. And there's a third son, whose name is She'la, which actually means in Hebrew "Shel La," that he's for her. But Yehuda doesn't give her him. And, I guess, he doesn't really know what's going on in the bedroom maybe, but he does know that he's had two boys who died, married to this woman, doesn' t bode well for the 3rd one. So, the answer is, in the meantime, "no." Now, you know the way of the Torah is that a person who's not had a child, so someone from the family, in the Torah later, the brother, is supposed to have a child by the woman. So these boys have died and the brothers are supposed to take her, and have a child by her. So, that doesn't happen, and so she seduces Yehuda. That's the encapsulated story. But, then interesting things start to happen. And especially in our context. She, when she's discovered to be pregnant, is taken out to be burned. So, in her being taken out because she is considered to have been, on some level, been an adulteress. 'Cause she's supposed be waiting for this other boy Shela. So, on her way out, it says v'hie mutzeit -- she has been taken out --v'amra -- and she said – this is all in Ch. 38 of Breishit – so she's taken out and she says the following crucial words: v'hie mutzeit, v'hie shalcha el chamiha l'emor, 'l'ish asher eleh lo, anochi ha'ra . She sends to her father-in-law what he had given her as a guarantee that he'll pay for the znut, and says to him "the man to whom this belongs, he's the one who I have become pregnant from." So Yehuda recognizes it, and he admits that it's from him. "She is more righteous than I am," tzadka mimeni. And lo n’tatiha l’Sheila bni. That "I was wrong in not giving her to my son Shela." V'lo yasaf od l'da'ata. And he didn't have any more relation with her, or, some say, he never stopped having connection with her. Yosef's back in the picture. V'lo Yasaf. Putting that aside, so what happened here? So the rabbis say a most amazing thing. The rabbis say, "she's been sent out to be burned," right? OK. V'hie mutzeit actually in Hebrew has a sound to it of hatzata, which means she's actually been lit on fire. And she doesn't simply declare to everyone "you all see what this is? You all see it? You all recognize what it is, right? You know who this belongs to; it's got his name on it; it's his chotam. This belongs to Yehuda, my father –in- law!" That would have saved her life! I mean, immediately they would have taken her off the fire-pier and looked in to it. But instead of exposing him, she sends it to him: let him decide. So, it almost sounds like she sends it to him in a box. You know, like "you open it up, you take a look at it and you decide what you're going to do with this." So the rabbis say, "what was going on here; why didn't she just say to everyone what had happened?" Lo ratzta lehalbin panav. She didn't want to expose his cherpa. She didn't want to shame him. V'lomar mimcha ani meuberet. And say "I'm pregnant from you." She didn't want to "whiten his face." Ela l'ish asher eleh lo amra. Im yodeh m'atzmo yodeh, v'im lav, yisrafuni. V'al albin panav. "If he admits, good. If he doesn't admit, let them burn me. It shouldn't be that I should whiten his face, and shame him." Mi kan amru Rashi then goes on and says, which is actually somewhat uncharacteristic of him, because you don't need to say this now in order to finish off explaining: from here the rabbis learn "better that a person throw himself into the burning furnace rather than shame another person in public." And, in fact, there's a story in Masechet Ketubot of a man who did that. Are you familiar? About Rabbe Zera, he used to give tzedaka to a neighbor and once the neighbor wanted to see who it was, so he opened the door when Rebbe Zera was fiddling with the money, and he started chasing Rebbe Zera. Rebbe Zera ran away because he didn't want him to actually see who it was and be embarrassed by him; he ran home and he jumped into the oven. Which, thank G-d, his wife jumped into first to protect him, because his wife didn't get burned. But he would have gotten burned. Which the Gemara then develops into a whole thing about why his wife was superior to him in terms of being protected from the burning. But the point is the rabbis actually take this very literally. That it's better to burn up rather than to, I guess, get someone else "hot in the face," you know, that they should burn. With shame. Now, this is amazing because this is the other aspect of Yosef, right? This is asaf li et cherpati, this is Yosef is the one who protects people from shame. "Ah," you say, "this isn't about Yosef; this is about Tamar." But this story is embedded in the teaching which is now being taught to Yehuda, who is the antithesis of Yosef. And her name Tamar actually reveals her as being the feminine form of Yosef. That's why lo yasaf l'da'ata. Because we have a verse which says tzadik k'tamar yifrach. Which is a Yosef verse. Tzadik – which is Yosef. He's called The Tzadik. So: blossoms like a tamar. But he's the tamar who is – it's just that Yehuda has met Yosef in the feminine form. And the whole teaching, really, that she gives over to him, is: "not shame another." Not shame another.
"See, I thought you were making so many correlations about Yosef earlier that were so connected to Dinah."
So, we'll wait with your ideas about that; I just want to have this here, that that not shaming him was an expression of his root of asaf et cherpati. Of to not shame another.
Tov, bezrat HaShem from there I want us to continue today – we've been exploring a lot of yosif li ben acher , and the power, in a sense, of Yosef's fertility. He's so fertile that he's turning everyone else on and making them become more of what they were before. That's like the primary, that's the feature of Yosef as the flame. Who's there as setting people on fire in a way in which they become more. In which they're mosif. In which they – in a sense – birth themselves into becoming more than what they were before. That's his tremendous power of fertility which is his great blessing – one of his great blessings. But the antithesis of that is to shame a person, to make them feel like nothing, to make them, like, go away, to make them be worthless in their own eyes. To basically burn them in the way of destructive burning. So, the image that the rabbis uncover in the verse is "you got a choice: to burn a person up or, if you're in a situation where you're going to shame them, or to get out of the way and let yourself be burned." Better to let yourself be burned than to burn another. That's a total Yosef perspective. You're really only here to be bringing other people's fire out, so if you're going to douse that, better that you should be burned than that they should be. That's the aspect of the selflessness of it. But the great teaching in that becomes this very, very powerful teaching which is a teaching about what is called ona'at dvarim. Ona'at dvarim is the rabbis description of what it means to shame another person and belittle them. And, b'ezrat HaShem we're going to explore that next time, this idea of asaf li et cherpati, and from there we'll see the very, very deep connection to yonati. Let's leave it at that. Any questions, contributions?
"My question was just, one of the descriptions of Yosef was, I felt, very, very [? Dinah?]. … interesting [?] Tamar. Just like, exposing out of the box, and like, um, like the concept of protecting from shame, like, she really like, I don't know if it was exposing a shame or like, also shaking things up. And yesod, and all those different…"
Those are all connections to Dinah, you mean? We knew that; Chazal say that explicitly,
"Really?'
but [??] I wasn't exploring that.
"I was really struck by, I mean, you obviously definitely like addressed it, and yet I also thought there was so much there, around the paradox of what you're saying about who Yosef is, in terms of bringing peace and in terms of, just the paradox, really, that's there because he seems to be stirring things up in a way. I mean, yeah, you talked about it. You talked about it, it's so…"
Yeah, I think it's really important for us to have clarity on the distinction between shalva , which is to be – nu, what's the word – to be content, and shalom. You see, peace actually is from the Hebrew word, which is not shalom, it's shalva. 'Cause peace, in Hebrew, is pius, which means, basically, to "make do with." Like lehafis da'ato shel mishehu. Lefayes oto is to calm him down so that we can get on with the business of the day. Peace is a Eisavian concept. In that sense, which is basically what they call in Hebrew: sheket tasiyati, that there should be "factory quiet." There must be some kind of phrase like that in English [ literally "manufactured peace" though the sense is changed in Hebrew]. Keep things moving calmly. Business as usual. Business as usual, keep the people content, satisfy the masses, don't get involved in new ideas, revolutionary people, keep the underdogs underdogs, but give them enough to keep them satisfied so that they don't start any revolutions, etc., etc.: that's peace! That's peace. That's a perfect picture of peace. And it's an Eisavian concept. This helps us with the sense of like, Eisav gets burned up by Yosef; there's no place for him, because Eisav is completely asui, he's born already done. He's basically the guy who's "made it." He's already hairy. When he comes out his mother's womb! He's got nothing to do with birthing. He's so, like, anti-birthing that the rabbis say "he tore Rivka's womb as he came out." He may even needed to have been born by a caesarian birth. Whatever. In any case, he created caesarian birth. That's what Caesars did; they're Eisavian. But the point is that he's totally not there, totally asui. And the point about Eisav is that he stands in total opposite and Yehuda, who has connections with Eisav and that's later revealed more deeply in David, who's ruddy. It says he's admoni; he's ruddy, right? The malchut can very easily fall into that kind of a sense of peace. In my opinion that's exactly what we're living right now; we're living through a period in which the malchut of Israel has become totally set on "peace," on pius. Which has nothing to do with shalom; totally nothing to do with shalom. It has everything to do with just kind of holding things as they are, not letting things get out of order and get out of hand. Shalom is an entirely different concept. Shalom is very dynamic, because shalom always involves – there's another level, which we're aiming towards, which we're aspiring to, which is what's called the makif. Which is the light which is beyond. The makifim belong to the world of Yosef. 'Cause he speaks to what is the next stage. That kind of shlemut, this is a whole other picture. So, only when you recognize what shalom is can you respect Yosef as the shalom maker, not as the peace maker. He's not a peace-maker at all; he's the shalom maker, and in being a shalom maker he comes from that perception of life as "my candle when it touches your candle there will be greater light. But I need your light. To be there, glowing. And if you are unwilling for that, and, instead of being light you've become iced-over, so then, you'll just melt away." That's the kash of Eisav. The only way for Yaakov and his dynamism, which is the dynamic of creation, which is the Jewish people, the only way for that dynamic – we're always the revolutionaries; that's just the way the Jewish people are. We're always the revolutionaries out on the barricades. The only way for that, for me to go back to Eretz Yisrael is to burn out the Eisavian. Only then will I be able to be there. Right.
"I totally thank you, and I've lots [to be?] thinking about in personal terms, in terms of, like, facing conflict, like, if somebody says "I'm your brother," I mean, he says 'I'm your brother, the one who you sold to Egypt.' Like, this statement of, you know, you focus on the connection of 'I'm your brother,' but, like, it necessarily, he has to say 'the one you sold to Egypt,' like, he reminds them, like 'you did this wrong!' And it's about, I see it more as also like a facing of conflict and like, facing…"
Oh yeah, for sure.
"… facing conflict in order to get to a place of peace. Like, if he goes through this 'peace process' in a sense that like, there's a process that gets to that peace, and it's about the process."
Wow, very strong, what you're saying. I hear what you're saying, that were he not to have been willing to expose what they had done to him, so then it would just be "peace seeking." Then it would just be "peace seeking," right, just looking for a pius. But if he's really looking for shalom, so you have to really face what you have done and what that means about you and where you have to grow towards.
"For some reason that's the way G-d made it. That the real peace happens only through facing like that…
"Fire."
…conflict, yeah, fire."
The hard stuff, yeah. Ok. Great.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: How Yaakov's aspect of Tiferet is the beauty that results from the connecting back of an individual element of the world to its source.
Episode Transcript:
The Chachamim tell about Yaakov Avinu that he was the most beautiful of the avot. The beauty of Yaakov was like the beauty of Adam Harishon, and his beauty surpassed that of the avot. And I think to appreciate some of why is very rooted in the kinds of balance Yaakov brings to the world because, if as we saw in the imagery that we touched in Avraham Avinu, when he becomes the out-breath, the breathing out of possibilties and the sharing and Yitzchak is the in-breath and the independent personhood, so there is a great risk in that, that the independent person becomes disconnected from Source. We all know this, and it's a great paradox we expanded upon, that in coming into one's own, there is a losing of the original place of Source. And a lot of life that is creative and forward-moving is about holding a very clear consciousness of Source, as one becomes more realized and expressed
And since we find out that Yaakov Avinu is the one who is realized personality, and when he becomes Yisrael, so his ability to hold the rootedness and to become particularly expressed intot he bechina of li rosh, that I have a head, meaning that I have both a head that I am sourced in andt hat I have a head, most particularly I have a perspective, a perception, a consciousness which is mine. That ability to hold those, which we saw in terms of Yisrael as shir-el, as holding those in the oscillation which becomes a song, is also very much present as a preparation for that ability to sing in the aesthetic, in the yofi, and tiferet, the midah of Yaakov, is the appearance of beauty and that has everything todo with holding this most delicate balance because there is something about beauty which is very mysterious. The theories around what impacts people as aesthetically pleasing are numerous. But the aspect of it that most interests me is the aspect that beauty has which ironically attaches the person to the transcendent, by which I mean that in the moment that a person appreicates something which is marvelously beautyful, so a profoundly aesthetic moment will not be translated into appetite, by which I mean, a true and delicate appreciation of beauty, it inculcates and brings on in the observer a sense of something which is transcending this object, or moment. And the opposite direction of becomine "appetitic", tyvadic, wanting to take it as your own, that kind of direction of soul and of emotion as generally not in the moment of the apprecition of the beauty. There maybe something which becomes arou\sed after that—and we'll explore that—but the moment of just the beauty of it, is quite ironically, I think, one which is generally moves one in the direction of wanting to share.
If I can describe what I think as a fairly universal experience, when there is a beautiful scene that someone sees, that's where it's most easy to appreicate, or a beautiful song that a person is hearing. So the place of purity in the appreciation of that is almost one which arouses in the listener or viewer a desire to share it. "It's unbelievable, did you see it?" Or, "Did you hear this song yet?" And people have this almost like a drive that it not remain their own. There's something here that I know we can share it. And it's not exactly that there is something missing if it's not shared. It's definietly still there whether it's shared or not shared. But there's something like a drive in a person that I want to share this with others. And this, I believe, is rooted in an extraordinary aspect of beauty—it arouses a person to a sense of the transcendent, by which I mean, that aspect of reality in which all is sharing, is together, and I believe the arousal to that comes from what I think, sort of we subconcsiously know, that somehow, the fact that there is beauty in the world is the most profound indication that this world has a selfhood. And what I mean, if you think about it, and we generally don’t, the world is a beautiful place, is the strongest indication about the commonality of our consciousness with what is. If it wasn't that our consciousness were somehow sharing with this planet what this planet is, then it wouldn’t appear beautiful to us; there would be something off about it or dissonant or repulsive about it, because it's not like something that we connect to. Like, beauty is a deep connector, not in the I'll just keep using this word until we come up with a better word—not in the appetetic way—it's a deep connector in the sense of, if I find this beautiful, then somehow that means that I really belong here. Somehow my consciousness, selfhood, what I take pleasure in an take enjoyment in is really meant for me, and the Being who made this made both me and that which I see, made both me and my awareness and that which I am aware of, and it's beautiful to me. These trees, these mountains, the sky, the clouds, the beautiful flower, beautiful human being. All of these are the strongest indication that there is a common root to it all. And that the ecology of it is one of unity and oneness.
There is a very deep sense of oneness and sense of well, that there is a creation here that is sharing with me in beauty. I'm not outside of it and disconnected from it. We're sharing something. And when I see a beautiful person or tree or hear beautiful music, it's a deep sharing, that shares the deepest recesses of who I am to the point that this is totally resonating with me, I feel at oneness with this. That level of connectivity and intimacy, is aroused in that experience of the beauty and is, in a sense, the Avraham side of the aesthetic, that it's all one fabric of being and we stand not outside it. That place, I believe, becomes aroused in a person, they want to go share it with someone. It's not like a symphony in two movements. It's one and the same movement of soul which is I have come to touch the intimate sharing of the one who made this and there is a sense of there being a personailty and a selfhood that is being shared here. But just the experience that there is a being that is being shared here arouses in me a desire that this beauty be shared. Because that is the nature of beauty, that it involves that kind of sharing. This is so deeply embedded in us that it doesn't take the logical analysis for us that I just did for us to experience it, but that's just how it is.
But the other aspect of it, is that the aesthetic is always epxerienced in the specific The bliss and the oneg that we spoke so much of around Avraham, and the world of anavah which is completely pashut, and as the gemara I saw this morning, I was led to it, daf kaf amud bet in avodah zarah, that says anavah gedolah mikulam,
that anavah is higher than all of them, which is precisely where we had been holding in the gemara there—all of that anavah, pshitut and stripping down is bliss, but it is not beautiful. It is not an experience of beauty there. It is a very profound pleasure and quiet and simplicity. But beauty, for it to appear, must come through the particularization of elokim, the particularization of the name of G-d which is not simple being but becomes the multitudinalness which is the expression ,the name of elokim, the name of Yitzchak, which is the one who brings out the divinity in its multiple expression. And until there's the multiple expression, so there's nothing to hold that would be experienced as beauitful. It's similar in terms of what we know and love, but here if it's not in terms of the aesthetic, a particular tree or person or view, --and as big and expansive as it is, it's still a specific view—that particularity of it is, I believe, what creates the duality of presence which is both that there is something here specific that's being shared with me and through which there is a window to that which is beyond it which shares all and that is the transcendent, which shares all. That way of being in it is a way which only comes by virtue of that realization in this particular most beautiful flower . And then my experience of that flower—and it doesn't have the be the most beautiful flower seen in the right state in the touching of transcendence—that flower becomes beautiful in its particularity, and in its trancience, but also somehow in its speaking what flower is, not just its particular flowerness, but what flower is. This is what life is. This is what our planet is, this is who our G-d is. And that kind of a ladder from that particular upwards is the ladder that Yaakov Avinu provides. That's why he's the consciousness of ladder. Because he always in experiencing the specific is experiencing the rtranscendent. And this happens when he leaves Israel and has the vision of the angels going up and down the ladder, and his experience of place, which is the place that he is lying on has all place concentrated in it, as we saw that the Rabbis taught vayifgah bamakom, he really hit the place. That hitting of place, the Rabbis say, was expressed by G-d when G-d told him, I give you all the land that you lie on, which the Rabbis then say, in their quizzical way, really? Just the four cubits he was lying on? You don't understand Yaakov. When Yaakov lies in one place, the whole universe is in that one grain of sand. When Yaakov lies on that place, so all of the Land of Israel, which is simply the beauty which is a window to all of the rest of the world, is on that place. So, for instance, the Rabbis teach us, that Yaakov is the one who taught the teaching of making space on Shabbat, as defining how far the techum goes. He was koveah techumim. And one of the remazim of that is vayichan et pnei hair, that he made the face of the city of Schem have chen, literally it means "he encamped here" So the Rabbis, in an esoteric term, say, he created an encampment and so on Shabbat, he also created the din of there's a place that is yours—al yetzeh ish minkomo, a person is not to go outside of his place on Shabbat. He is to be there just where he is and not to walk beyond that. He created that there in that encampment in that beauty.
But the Rabbis also teach, that more than any other patriarch, Yaakov Avinu was given, far beyond what Avaraham was, when Avraham was given the gift of the land, he was todl, walk it to all its length, it is yours. And Yitchak, when he was given the land, he was told, As far as you can see. That is what's yours. But Yaakov, it says about him, ufaratzta yamah vkedma, tsafona vanegba, you are to expand to the west, to the east, to the north, to the south, and anyone who, the Rabbis teach, eats the third meal on Shabbat, or eats the meal which is the meal of Yaakov, as the meals are paralell to the avot, so he gets an inheritence that has no end. And yet it's Yaakov who taught us the limits of being in your own place on Shabbat. But now we can understand that, because in being in truly your place, so you're really there and it's beautiful to you, meaning that you have the deep sense of its belonging to you, its appealing to you, so that is your window to all, it's the only way that it could be. That to have access to all is by having a window through the specific. Everything else just becomes transcendental and disconnected. But Yaakov is that bridge and ladder. And the ladder he sees while he's lying on the specific place which attaches him to all place and on the one stone which become formed of the twelve stones which argued for him to put his head on it. That is his consciousness and that is his reality. And when he comes back to the land of Israel, the same thing happens. When he crosses over the River Jabbok.
Now this River Jabbok, as it's taught in Kabbalah, is the combination fo the two primary names which we've spoken so much of. And that is the name Havayah. Yud and heh and vav and hey, which is the name of being, and the name elohim, which is the multitude expressed, which is the name of becoming and of creation. And the numeric value of those two names is Jabbok. And Rashi brings that the Rabbis teach that he made himself into a bridge to cross the Jabbok. Meaning, that he is the holder of both being and becoming where he is holder of the transcendent, beyond, unchanging presence which all is shared in and the specific and particular expression which comes through Yitzchak of this particular woman, this particular place. And he must carry that to hold those both and does in his own beauty. And so he is very beautiful, that's what he holds. He's beautiful as Adam Harishon is beautiful. He's as beautiful as the one who held all of humanity in him. He's the one whose radiance is a radiance of all of reality. And that transcendence is expressed through him in that kind of revelation that we experience something every time that we are experiencing something in its beauty.
I know this very deeply in music and I believe it's true in art too. There's a beautiful film of Yitzchak Perlamn teaching the best children virtuosos of the world. Children can be a virtuoso because of extraordinary technical ability. So you can have a child who mamash plays like an incredible creation. So in this film you see on violin one of these Japanese or Jewish kids—there seem to be certain races that are especially good at this—playing very difficuly piece on violin. And it's good, it's astounding, the ability. Then, to teach them, he takes the violin and begins to play. And it's just another world, and it's not that his technical ability is different from theirs. What has shifted here? What has shifted here is the depth of resonance of his own personhood which is connecting into the inner spirit of the—I don't know if there are words for this—it's the ruach, it's the inner breath of the breath. It's not enough to have sung it, but it's the presence of the personhood there. The others were impressive and astounding and awesome, and all the other words to descirbe our amazement. But it became beautiful when there was the depth of a personality there that was expressive of life. That's when it became beautiful. I know anytime I play music, that's when it becomes beautiful. And I'm committed to it beign that way in Torah also. Even so, I must say I sometimes have my ambivalence of even teaching what I'm teaching now. I think I'm giving over te truths. I really sense that. But ti's not like the technical tightness and arguability always—at least in the level of consciousness—that say, a Talmudic discourse would be given over (although, who knows? Maybe some day those rules will be—they do for me sometimes 31:27). But nevertheless, the depth of that, when it's connected, there's an entirety of a personhood that speaks through that, that's when it becomes beautiful. And that's because it's connecting to the source, it's connecting to the soul, and a life.
Yaakov Avinu carries that. That is his being, and it's also what makes it so possible for Yaakov Avinu to be responsive to things as they are, as we've spoken out, because he is the responsive one. His own beauty makes him so connected to what is, he responds to the specifics of every moment and he responds to people as they are. He sees them always as a window to what is beyond them, and what is beyond also their own particular awareness. Someone might not know what he really wants. And Lavan might not know what he really wants. Yaakov really knows what he really wants and he provides that to them. He responds. He follows with temimut where life leads him because of that same kind of sense of it all being bridged. I'd like to work that out more clearly somehow because I see them as related. Certainly I do know that the ones who appreciate beauty most are temimim. Temimim, not in the sense of not knowing. A tamim can be a very knowledgable person. And I believe that the more knowledgable and the more intelligent the tamim is, so the more of his depth of the appreicate of the aesthetic will be. Not because he's bringing up how the helium of the sun reacts and creates heat, and all that stuff, but there's just something about the depth of a person that happens because of his knowing of what reality is that enters into that moment even though it's not conscience in that moment. But the primary mode of experiencing beauty is in temimut, in ingenuousness, simplicity, in not trying to place upon it my own agenda and intentions. To really just be with it as it is. To really just be with it as it is can turn almost anything into beauty.
Now there are things in reality which seem to be designed to be repulsive. You know, large rats and palmetto beetles. It does seem that G-d has the roah, you know, the evil also represented in the aesthetic. But, I think ultimately the tamim would be able to touch something of the beauty in that, too. Temimus also has to do with a stripping of—not like anavah, but a stripping of temimut, that's why pshitut and temimut come together—but it's different in that temimut, has already become specified into my particularness and your particularness, and I'm opening to receiving things just as they are. (35:30)
I realize that the bracha that we say when we see something beautiful is, she kacha lo b'olamo. It's just as it is, it's just that way in His world. And it's important to say In His world, in the sense of the person behind it. Did I once share with you this interaction I once had with someone who'se very heavy into Buddhism? We were walking outside and we were chatting about things and I was just so taken by the beauty of where we were, I just said to him, how can the simplicity of being and the relating to this as an illusion—an almost unintended illusion—how could it be so beautiful? The beauty gives such a strong sense of there's someone there Who made that for you? How do you explain that? Either he didn't have an answer, or he didn't want to bother me, I don’t know which. But he was willing just to appreciate that. It's like Jewish.
What is the Buddist conception of beauty?
I don't know all that much about Buddhism, so it's not fair, but my sense is that the attitude or that consciousness that the only thing that's real is the phsitut has to do with the anavah. The only thing tha'ts real is that, and that none of this is real or ture, misses the so to speak, personality of G-d that stands behind wanting this and having made this. That, in a sense, in a world where the true ascent is to the pshitut to the simplicity, so on a certain level, there can be no aesthetic appreciation, so then all of this is a lie, it's not really true. But in a world where there is a Will-er, where G-d wills that this should be and confirms, so to speak to us, His Will, by making it beautiful for us, so then, there's a different truth which is accessed. And the access to the truth, and indeed truth and beauty, I think experientially they ride in the same wavelength, the experience of something that is beautiful and the experience of something that is true, they often come together. (40:05) because both of them are indicative of this is really matim. And by the way the word matim and emet are the same lettes. They are the "rightness" of it. This fits. This isbeautiful—it fits. Whether it be the symmetry of it, or This really speaks to me, this isbeautiful. This speaks to me true. The theoery you have in physics, it fits reality, it's toen what is. That is so deep in expereince which is why the word emet is teom, it's a twinning of things that are matim one to another and Yaakov is not only the man of beauty but he is also the man of truth. Emet titen emet l'yaakov. Why would he be both the man of truth and the man of beauty? This iso Jewish a perception of beuaty and of truth. Because in every truth and in every beauty we experience the Will-er Who has willed that we should be here in the world and made us all of the same stuff. But that gives high value to this "illusion." We know the anavah of Avraham, we know the strict of all expression simplicity of simple being but we know something deeper, and that is sthere is a will that this should be here, now as we experience it, and is desiring this for us, that is making this dirah batachtonim, a dwelling place here in all of thie magnificent, multiple and diverse reality.
So yes, it's illusion, but its' also an allusion to something else, but that's a whole different perspective and perception, that it's alluding to something. And the aspect of reality as alluding to something is its teomiyut, that it's a twin. It's twinned to the transcendent. It's twinned to the inner will of the one who and possibly and paradoxically is a will that includes somehow a desire that there should be a particular and specific manifestation. It’s a mystery in all of the sefarim. It's called the great peleh, the great wonder that our consciousness cannot access. But it is the great wonder which all of Judaism is built on. And it's the great wonder which Yaakov touchesk who's also in the middle line. He touches this place in the keter. He's the lower keter, crown, the upper crown being the meeting between the finite, and the lower crown being the meeting of the infinite and finite in the world in the place of beauty. And this is the level which is called tamati, which the Rabbis darshan teomati, my twin. Because when you look at the world and all the beauty, it's like, we're twin. And that twin, that teom is emet. This is true. This is meant to be here. If it wasn't meant to be here, then it wouldn't be beautiful. And there are ugly spiritual conceptions that say that the beauty of the world is only sort of a distraction or a temptation or a taking away from. This isugly spirituality that denies the goodness of a G-d who gave us a beautiful world that we would bless on it sha kacha lo b'olamo, that it's just like this in His world. Just like this in this world is such a temimistic thing to say. It's total temimut. Sees a beautiful woman, a beautiful man, a beautiful animal, a beautiful tree, baruch atah hashem elokeinu melech haolam she kacha lo b'olamo. It is like this in His world. It's just like this. I don't have anything more to say about this because its fact of beauty derives from the fact that I have nothing more to say about it. It's not something I can figure out, it's just touching something so deep in the makeup of what I am. And the wonderful secret of Yaakov that it's just touching something so deep in the makeup of what I am, I'm touching something which is so deep in the makeup of the One Who made it, that I'm touching the place of kacha, that's just the way it is. It's a very high place. In fact, there's a drasha of the mekubalim she kacha means, keter, kol haketarim, it's an acronym for the crown of all the crowns, that it's just the way it is. IT's such an important thing to appreciate and to know. And the custom is at the beginning of everyyear, by which I mean Rosh Chodesh Nisan, when the world, at least in Israel is at its most beautiful, and everythign is just beginning to blossom so you go out and make one bracha that everyone has to make on beauty once a year on the trees. And it’s a very particular moment in the tree's coming into manifestation that you make that blessing on it. And that is when the tree just begins to bud. When the fruit isn't yet a fruit. That would already be too far down the line when the specific already begins to be threatened to be disconnected from Source. Nor is it just generic tree, so to speak, the tree in it's is-ness before it's become manifest. But it's thr tree just as it begins to manifest its beauty and purpose. Right at that meeting point between is-ness and doing, between potentiality and simplicity, the realization just at that meeting point, that's when you make the blessing which is G-d has made things to give man pleasure. Pleasure in the sense of artistic, not oneg, but hana'ah, beneficial and beautiful pleasure. That's when the source is in place, and the expression has just begun to be, we say Thank You, G-d, that You have not left anything lacking in Your world. And You've given us beautiful things that we should enjoy, and beautiful trees, like this one. That's it. That's the place of Yaakov, that is the place of beuaty. And in a sense, successfully or not, his life is devoted to that, in holding a house and family together. In holding the multitude of children that they should be one house. In holding two wives, one of this world, and one of the next, Rachel and Leah. (50:02) And holding in a sense two personalities, of Yaakov, who comes from there and Yisrael, who's the particular expression of always holding a duality into one, which is his task and his reality. Ultimately, we'll take Yosef to express that in the world, and it will be Yosef who will send to bring peace between the brothers, which is his life's work, to bring peace between the brothers, and this particular ability that Yosef has, and in a sense, Yosef, far more than Yaakov, becomes the man of chen, the man of attractive beauty, and the ability to hold together in this world the multiplicity, something that Yaakov never really succeeded in doing. That's why Yosef is the prime progeny of Yaakov: eleh toldot Yaakov, Yosef. He can do that. And where Yaakov risks going wrong in his temimut by descending to complacency, as it says that he sought to live in complacency, bikesh leshev b'shalvah. It's Yosef's always moving beyond that forced him to reawaken that beauty, temimut and the pleasure of that never be in complacency with that. It can be a quiet moment of a Shabbat within this reality, but you can never stay there. And you can't go back there and it's always in motion. And you can rest in it here and now just as it is, but that very Jewish consciousness of there is another step to go is always waiting at the doorstep. Not that it always needs to be there in those moments. You can have the bliss, and you can have the temimut, the appreciation of things as they are, but it will end. And never think that that ending as an illusion has returned. (53:30) No, that's the truth that G-d wants us to live here in this world with its particulars, its specifics, its moments, its people, and its beautiful places that are always reminding us of the embeddedness in what's beyond, but call us also to the presence of what is.
These are other important elements of Yaakov that I’m able to share. And I'm wondering if we can have—I just like have this so strongly in him. I'm wondering how Yaakov and Yisrael and what we've understood of them are expression to that. I have a sense that it can't be entirely simple. I'd like for it to be so to speak simple. That Yaakov is relating to the all and Yisrael becomes the speciifc li rosh. But it's not true because Yaakov is the one who stays in the world and never dies. He never resubmerges into that simplicity of being the was that Yisrael does, who does that. So Yisrael seems more otherworldly Yaakov more worldy. But as we've seen it's Yisrael and his becoming specific that he's able to become similar to G-d Who is the yechido shel olam, the only one in that uniqueness, so he touches it throught there. So then, who was Yaakov? Unless all he is is simply the process towards that. Maybe that's all Yaakov is, the process towards that. I don't know for sure. I have a deep sense that it would be helpful for us to identify the futures of them in a way that fits with this, of course it must be, because this is who he is. And my current sense is that Yaakov's really the movement towards that, he's always moving towards that and it becomes realized in Yisrael. And he appreciates beauty as he does the beauty of Rachel and he is himself very beauty. But the ultimate realization of that beauty in its fullness is really ultimately in Yisrael. Meod yesh l'ayeyn.
I thought about sharing beauty. Sometimes there's a feeling that it's only worth-- If no one sees it, you want to share it because it will disappear. You want to make it real.
Those are two different things and they are each deserve their own looking at. You're talking about aspects of netzach sheb'tiferet. It only becomes meaningful when I share it. I'm looking for it to have meaning and a worth. And also in that—and I believe those two things are related, what you said—that you believe it's going to last. Only I see it, well, I'm so transient. So if someone else sees it, it's become more real, somehow, because now, it's not just me. The falsehood in that is, okay, you just added another transient human being. How may transient human beings do you need to add for it to become real? It's absurd. Because if you don't relate to yourself as having received it as it having been real, then it really doesn't add if another person and another person and another person have seen it too. So it seems. So that kind of driven sharing is probably not the level we're looking at. There's a different level that we're looking at that it's so real that I want everyone to share in it and to paritipate in it because the truth is, we all do participate and share in that. Now I know that G-d didn't construct us to always be on that level, so He made a fail-safe system. The fail-safe system is driven (59:45) by I want to hold onto it and so by sharing it with someone else I make it more real and solid so now a lot of people are seeing it. So I hold that as a fail-safe system that gets the job done that now a lot of people have seen it. It's fail-safe because it's ego driven based on my own insignificance and an attempt to so to speak create significance by sharing with others. But I think, more profoundly, the experience of true self-hood is of ultimate significance, but not egotistical selfhood. True selfhood, soul-sefhood. Of myself as being godly, a piece of G-d, a soul of G-d. And that soul of G-d now speaks the desire to share as He always does, which is what this world comes from. So when we attach to that, so when we look to share it. That is like an aspect of the yesod of the tiferet. There's like a desire to share it. And that's why also Yosef becomes so important to Yaakov. His one-ness. So now it's stepping out and manifesting in another's consciousness or in another's body or in another's personhood this that I have seen.
See how we really need to explore more about Yosef. We have in the past. But one really profound aspect of Yosef is this power of sharing, which is inappropriate sometimes, in the way he shares his dreams, he's like sharing everything. Seeking to share, and he wants to hear other people's dreams—I think we talked a bit about that last time—and how Choni Hameagel his descendent, o chvruto mituta – I must share, that's just the reality of who I am, he becomes the intensified version of that in yesod, I must share it. And that as an ontological reality. He is the tov that we talked aobut way way long ago. The ontological reality of lo tov lihiyot adam l'vado. It's not good that man be alone. Tov in the kabbalah is yesod. Reaching beyond what I am to touch another. That's Yosef and why he's always experiencing beyond and beyond and beyond, it's never touched at all. (1:03) That's very profound in love that always moving beyond.
I just want to say one more thing about that. That aspect of Yosef as always moving beyond—Yosef, Yosef li ben acher—always moving beyond, connecting outwards, connecting to another, has to be extremely sensitive to and precise in its integrity. It's faithfulness. That's hwy the main midah, the main characteristic of a Tzaddik has to be that he's faithful. He's ne'eman. If you remember is the aspect of yonati. Always looking into the eyes of the other into the beloved. Very crucial, and in a sense drawn from Yaakov's being in the place. Because if there's not faithfulness, then he's out theree this youthful sowing his oats everywhere and left with nothing. This adolescent uncontrolled outward-turned connector. But in his faithfulness is his greatness. This is why the Rabbis teach that in his most trying moment with the wife of Potiphar, the wife of Poti-phera, so he almost failed until he saw the image of Yaakov in the window. A perfect picture. He looked up and saw the image of Yaakov in the window, the midrash says. And understood that he was about to lose his place among the children of Yaakov, Because it's Yaakov connecting the specific with a grand vision, so to speak. So without faithfulness it would be lost. Can't take away another man's wife. Forget it. And that was it. That's really when Yosef became the Tzaddik. Because he connected to reliability and faithfulness and to the honor of relationship in its specificity. That's when goes all the way up and connects to the highest of the keter, that is G-d's faithfulness to His creation. That's the yonah that is looking at the king and can't take her eyes of Him, the Zohar says, and He can't take His eyes off her.
That's on the one hand. But on the other, he's always reaching out, connecting more, feeding the world, feeding the planet. Caring about everyone, caring about the Egyptians—he really cares aobut the Egyptians!—Only by virtue of his caring about the Egyptians does he come to be able to feed the world.
(1:07:47) (Question in Hebrew: When you talk about specificity, I'm interested in knowing what you think about post-modernism exactly, I dunno, if you know, maybe you'll say something about that. It focuses, I mean, there isn't one story, there are many, everything is so specific…)
I'm not sure either. I've like to contemplate that more, but my sense is that In post-modernism where everything is just more the particular perception of the one seeing it, is a destruction of beauty. And I don't know what post-modernist art looks like, but I can just imagine. It's likely to not be very beautiful because it's lost te sense of Yaakov's truth, which is there is One behind in his personhood in His willingness and desiringness. There's certainly much more to be said here. But I do think that a shared aesthetic is something which stands in opposition to post-modernist perception. I don't really know anything about post-modernist aesthetic.
What about "beauty is in the eye of the beholder"?
That's chen. There is such a thing as chen. We talked about that. That's not yofi. Sheker hachen. Chen and emet don’t come together. So they talk about chen, I guess. Well, I like it. That's nice. It isn't bad that you like it. But there is something called yofi. Yofi has to do with emet. But it's also hevel. We explained this once I think. Yofi is hevel, it is so rooted in truth that this world can't hold it. That beautiful rose is going to wilt, that beautiful woman is going to age. It's not going to stay that way. That's the hevel aspect of it because it's in this world and it can't stay that way.
The ability to sit in my specificity to really connect to the greater will of Hashem, it's a struggle all the time to figure out what's the specific. It hit me really hard what you said about these other avodahs that the beauty of the world is a distraction and somehow I feel we do that too to women, I feel that very personally, the space of okay, I'm trying to connect with my specific me, and there's not so much space for me to do that, because my specific me is feminine, and that's just what it is, and you're telling me to hide it all the time because that's a distraction for you in this world and it's something I struggle with deeply and it's something that daily I say, Let's get out of this religion and take off to something else where I actually can express myself.
So immediately I was, that's what shomer aynayim is, you're saying what's beautiful in a woman is not from Hashem.
I hear and I want to cry with you over what you experience as a woman as so much the spirituality of ugliness I talked about, which would prefer an ugly world, so to speak, so that it wouldn't be so distracting. And what I want to share is that the phenomenon that you describe is an unfortunate not only by-product that you describe but may be one of the chief by-products of our fallen state which comes from eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Because it's painfully present in the Chumash that the first thing they do after the eating of the fruit is that they cover themselves so that they not see each other as they are. And that is such a powerful—it's not only a reality, which is real—but the temimut we lost that in a sense was lost. And when it was lost, we became unable to see fully things just as they are because the acquisitive appetitic self became so real that our ability to look beauty without attempting to own it and posses it became a very deep challenge. And so we hid away who we are, and we hide from what others are and very deep part of all that I'm teaching is, certain levels of Messianic consciousness, because they are only available in a Messianic condition. That's not chas v'shalom to say that we should sacrifice it all in the now. But it is to say that there are certain realms which are so tempting to become possessive that they're better left unspoken. Certain beauties that are left for very special and specific places where they can be expressed without possessiveness becoming destructive. And so I share that with you, and in sharing some of the pain, there is a beautiful poem of Rav Kook: All existence whispers to me in secret. I have life to offer. Take it, take it. If you have a heart and in the heart red blood courses, which despair has not soiled. But if your heart is dulled and beauty holds no spell to you, existence whispers: Leave me, leave. I am forbidden to you. If every gentle sound, every living beauty, stir you not to a holy song but to some alien thought, then leave me, leave, I am forbidden to you. And a generation will yet arise and sing to beauty and to life, and draw to light unending from the dew of heaven. And a people returned to life will hear the wealth of life's secrets. From the vistas of the Carmel and the Shomron, and the light of song, and life's beauty, the holy light will abound, and all of existence will whisper, my Beloved, I am permitted to you.
Even in understanding the spaces that it comes from feels very real to me that it's just not possible to express the transcendent to hashem, like voice Hashem's oneness with all the blocks. Maybe the blocks have to be on one side, but there's a space, like everything is a microcosm of everything else—everything. So creating blocks within ourselves creates blocks within ourselves. Don't think that when you feel compelled to sing, because there could be a man's out there—whoa I'm blocked! You mean I can't express what I'm needed to express? Okay, but that moment…there's a lot of levels happening at the same time.
Closed down.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: The relationship of Avraham and Yitzchak as out-breath to in-breath. This reliability becomes revealed in Yosef.
Episode Transcript:
Something important to me that we touched was the wisdom of the out-breath that we talked about and how that was expressed through Avraham's addition of the hey. The addition given to his name which allows for the appearance of Yitzchak. And what for Avraham is the outbreath, is for Yitzchak the in-breath, meaning that for Avraham it's the letting go of the at-oneness that is being held in the consciousness that he has as Avraham. And in Avraham, he is able to breathe out, which already implies that there is an other, and an empty space to breathe into. And in his breathing out, he brings about, so to speak, the consciousness of another space to breathe into, which corresponds to the appearance of Yitzchak, the realization of atah, you. So the outbreath that Avraham puts out is the experiece of there being a cavernness space out there which allows for an other.
I must say that it's a bit of a trial, I think, living with Avram which was experienced by his nephew, Lot, which in Avraham's intense consciousnes, it's not really in any way a lording other, there's just not any space for an other to become real personhood, and so it can become a smothering, when the ezer, help aspect is too present. Not ezer in the sense that you are you and I am I—that's a different ezer. But, rather, there's just a seamless and undifferentiated reality of togetherness, which Lot runs away from, literally, going to Sodom and Amorah , which are the preceise opposite consciousness, with Sodom and Amorah being the exact inverse of that consciousness, which the Rabbis describe as sheli sheli, shelcha, shelcha, what's your is yours, what's mine is mine. This is a position in life which is not a complete, holy and legitimate (complete, wholly illegitmate? 8:02) position, which is, if you're going to make it, then you're going to make it on your own. And any help I give you will be soiling your living out of the life that you need to live out and Lot runst o this place Sodom and he intends to there make his own life. But that other extension of what is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours, leads to all of the terrible things that Sodom is known for, including the inability to reach out and help to another with charity, etc. Even to help out by recreating in heterosexual relatinoshp, also becomes part of the world of Sodom. The connectivity is all self-involved, and that is din in its kilkul. That's why the stand of my separateness becomes polluted with self-involvement which doesn't really give space for relationship with another who is different.
But Yitzchak is the appearance of din in its tikkun. And it has to do with this beautiful image that we've come upon of Avraham, so to speak, breathing out and Yitzchak breathing in, and that's a wholly different experience of the place of din. To breathe in that is being breathed in to you. Because when one then breathes in, first of all, it's just physically what begins to function is more left brain than right brain. So you take a breath in, so you start thinking about things. When you take a breath out, so you merge. And I don't know all the biology of this, and whether it's trackable in terms of brain waves, but I have the personal sense of two modes of consciousness being activated by those two different movements. And that oscillation of breath becomes a real bodily embodied expression that the Rabbis refer to in the Zohar as tre merim delo mitpardim. That aba and ima, that place of wisdom that is Avraham's place of supernal receptivity, which is complete openness, and the place of binah which is where the place of Yitzchak begins from, are out-breath and in-breath, and right brain and left brain. And if there's no continuum between them, then the world would surely die. There would be no continuum between unity consciousness and the receiving of source of life and specification into the particularity of things. If those would not be held in this almost circular process of breathing, then the world would collapse. And many people's worlds have collapsed, that way too. And stay only in the out breath, or only in the in-breath; staying in the loss of self, and in the mergence into seamless being, or staying in the in-breath of my thoughts, my understanding, my reality. It's in this marvelous cycle of breath that life is lived. And that cycle of breath becomes expressed in a ceratin level in the keter, and in higher da'at. With keter being the contact point between the infinite and the finite, but held together in a mysterious way which is impossible for us to penetrate, at least in normative consciousness. Our dichotomous thinking cannot hold that both the infinite and finite can't (sic. 13:12) co-exist, that there's finite within the infinite, that there's separateness within that oneness. We get a pictrue of that in ecology, where the world is interconnected, and we get a picture of tha tin Ya'akov, as we saw., becomes the realization of seeing that in the world, with all of life and organism, but in the keter it's still very abstracted. But chochmah and binah are the beginnings of the appearance of that, at least in terms of human life in a mental function, in terms of consciousness.
Getting a right realiatinoship with keter is the crucial stance that was missed by the sun and especially the moon in her inability to hold unity consciousness and separateness, with her being the experience of separateness. And in her experience of separateness, she insisted that there could not be two together, and in a sense tended off in the direction of Sodom and full separateness, which is the loss of rootedness in higher consciousness and in the divine presence. And all of the processes that histroy leads us through and that we've been seeing are all about having right relationship in keter. To not have right relation ship in keter is something that I use, shnei melachim mshamshin b'keter echad, keter being something that I live, always living an expressed self that is in unity with its source.
So when Avraham and Yitzchak appear, and he needs to become Avraham to breathe out and so Yitzchak breathes in, so the image has to be like being breathed out, being breathed into and then holding that and having that and then breathing it out to vacate again to become a recipient of another breath. That is a description of the consciousness of Avraham and Yitchak. Yitzchak then becomes the one who breathes in and then holds the breath like a baby holds the milk and then is invited by that milk which ahs been ingested to become her or his own person. The Rabbis say that for a person to become a person of Torah and creative Torah, on a ceratin level has to be able to spit up some of the milk that has been ingested, which is the spitting up of the baby which then becomes the reflection of the baility to make a birur, a clarification of what I'm keeping and holding and building of my own, and what' I'm giving to others to have and take for their own path. It becomes I know that I can't have it all, that's the spitting up. And adah rabah, that experience of giving back of, an aspect of returning to the pool of possibilities for an other to have. So a rectified consciousness of the one who has received the influx and doesn't hold onto it all for himself, but some I recognize as being mine, and some I return to the cosmic pool from which others will draw. That act already is an anti-sodomite act, its an anti-Lot act, and it’s a right response to Avraham, rather than the reactivity, which is Lot, which also expresses itself in children rebelling and in man's first eating of the Tree of knowledge.where his sense and ability to hold and to have aws so skewed that he thought that in order to establish himself he needed to rebel and sin. But the greater and more full the sense of right selfhood there is, so the greater the ability would be to live as one who senses being supported in becoming oneself without having to rebel in order to estabilsh it, without having to cut myself off in order to be. And this is the deep sod of the pasuk in Shir Hashirim, which says, smolo tachat roshi, viy'mino tchapkeini. His left hand is under my head, and His right hand embraces me. His left hand under my head is a description for the experience of din, the left hand, the hand of restraint and holding back, which when one experiences G-d in His left hand as a support, so then one begins to know the path of herea, which we described last time, meaning, when din is experienced, and the vacating of G-d is experienced as, yes, now I'm weaning from you, and I'm holding the breath that you've given me, and it's going to become expressed and manifest through the myriad ways in my life, and I'm always experience your having removed Your presence from me and Your milking me; I'm experiencing that removal as a support for my head.
And this is what Yitzchak experiences that Avraham, in breathing into him and leaving him to be himself, is giving him the greatest support that can possibly be, which is the removal of the ongoing maintenance of him holding him. So much of life revolves around this, and when the presence is gone, when the influx is not there. To view that as not an abandonment, and becoming a response which is a fight, but rather an experience of an invitation and a support and an encouragement to now take that breath and build it into a human being that is your particular expression. That is what G-d longs for as we saw with the grass. Learning its kal v'chomer about itself. That's what G-d desires and it gives him the greatest joy and happiness which is the simchah, the simchah in binah, and the simchah of the mother whose child can live his life. So this, what I'm attempting to describe is a depiction of this transition point between Avram, Avraham, and then Yitzchak.
There's a great irony. There's an experiencing of the great vacating that I'm experiencing as an invitation. The vacating is never completely vacated, and the Arizal describes a single line that comes down. It's called a thin line. It's thin because, out of the infinite possibilties of G-d's creative presence, there's one thin line which is the one that He's chosen for this world to be. And in His own leavning of possibilities and sending down one particular line, that is in itself, a great sacrifice. G-d, so to speak, limits His inifinity to become delineated by a particular finitude. That same sacrifice is the experience also of the sacrifice in our loving relationship with Him. We have myriad selfhoods that we could become. Infinite possibilities of who we can be—near infinite possibilities.
Someone was sharing his advertisement with me—which I strongly rejected—for a seminar in personal growth in which one of the title statements was that will give you ways to fully realize your potential. That's a cruel lie to talk to people about fully realizing their potential. And it creates terrible perversions of personality when a person's devotion as they experience it is to become the full realization of their potential. There is no such possibility for anyone to fully realize their potential. Because their potential is infinite. And then you get into this, well you're not using your potential full enough. What do you mean "use my potential"? I don't "use" my potential, I express my potential. I'm not manipulating it into some agenda that has been pre-determined and pre-described. And I'm expressing it in one particular path. And that one particular path becomes my own kav in which I vacate all the space, so to speak, of all the other potentialities, in the great sacrificial act of choosing one way. But in that we are modeling the divine act and that divine act is done, as we've been seeing, that there should be one particular aspect of divninty which we will relate so that indeed there can be relationship. Because there's a particular personhood, ki v'yachol of G-d, that we talk to, interact with, can relate to, not another no, He's not always slipping away into some other possibility No, He becomes faithful, reliable, integrous, all of these aspects of His ki v'yachol selfhood that is revealed to us are what creates the possibility of there being relationship and connection. So we are called upon to imitate G-d in that way, and to choose a personhood that is faithful, and reliable and integrous, and one particular line that is being followed and committed to, and/in (28"00 the great sacrificial act of the pinui et hamakom and for the vacating of the space for there to be one line to come down and occupy that space. Now in being one line, it's tenuous and the experience of selfhood is oftentimes tenuous. You can be moved this way and that way. IT's very delicate when you step out of your chosen expression and being. It's very delicate when you're losing it and getting unfaithful to. It's a very thin path. In the Maharal he calls it the nativ, a thin path that we follow. It's how he entitles his book, Netivot Olam, a very delicate and thin path and I’m staying in the image, I'm not sure how to describe the experience, except to say that when you violate an aspect of what it is that you know is how you ought to be, it's often very delicate and subtle, I’m going back, in any case, that experience of the tenuousness of it, is also part of the experience of Yitzchak in his relation to G-d.
This whole life here that G-d has made for us is a very thin and tenuous line that the Ari describes as coming into the black backdrop of G-d having vacated His infinite presence. And so the experience of life becomes very tenuous. It's like with just a slight shift, this whole world could become a an entirely different planet. With me not being here, it would become an entirely different planet. It would take a whole lot and certainly now, as we understand the physics of reality, it wouldn't take a whole lot for the whole thing to shift into something else entirely. A chut ha searah, and in fact, the Rabbis say, usvivah mesarah meod, that around G-d it's very stormy and that storminess, the Rabbis says, is mamash like a searah, like a chut hasearah. It's like a thin hair's breadth. The Tzaddik who get close to G-d, the more they get in touch, ironically, with the infinity of G-d's being, creates a realization of the very tenuous nature of the particular expression that this world is, this life is. And this is the irony of Yitzchak's experience of both G-d having vacated the space that there should be an other. Also is accompanied by the experience of the tenuousness of that otherness. The great experience of G-d's love in having given up the all of that pleasure and the infinite joy of his own presence, which is the shaashuim, His childlike playfulness the Zohar describes it as, pleasure in Himself, of giving that up to become a particular expression, out of love, or the desire of the possibility for love, by creating distance and otherness. So no one experiences the love as deeply as the one who knows the empty space which has been vacated fro him to be, the love for Him and his specificity. But also no one experiences the tenuousness of that specificity and the particular life that He's living as deeply as the one who experiences the love for Him. And this is the deep irony of I know that G-d has been vacated all through this particular expression of me, and I also know that this expression of me is a very thin line among all of the inifinte possibilities of what G-d might have expressed. And could therefore be gone in a moment, like nothing but the blink of an eye, without a second thought so to speak, and then there would be something else. G-d wouldn't be short of. The only think holding that cog in place is G-d neemnut, G-d's reliablitiy, and this is why G-d's emunah in the triad of the elements of Keter, emunah is the hgihest, not because it's faith in, but because it's G-d's relizability, because he is reliable to this expression. What I am referring to in the keter, there is in the lowest level of keter, so to speak, it's His will—that's His will to express, above will in the keter, that's called arich anpin, above will in keter is what's called atik, the pleasure, which is His pleasure, the pleasure of what is to be and the pleasure of just simply being. That's what we were talking about when we were talking about anavah. But then above that is ereisha d'lo ityada, is the head which is never known, and that head which is never known, Chassidut talks about as having the power of faithfulness. And the reason it has that power is because it's only by faithfulness that the entirety of reality is maintained. And if you have no sense of the faithfulness of G-d., so then you have no sense of your reality being able to continue to be. So you must call upon that in order to create a confidence of: is there going to be a next heart beat? After, all, He breathed into me so that I should hold this next breath. He had me weaned because He loves me and He holds me in His love in creating the gap between us that there would be no love if it had only been only the seamless oneness of existence. There could be no love without longing and space wbetween us. There would be no life. And the very knowing of that creates the same ongoing fear and trepidation that it could end at any moment. Could end at any moment. It's not me, it's not of my making. It's always reliant on His faithfulness to me.
It's His way in which a life becomes lived mamash, as the Rabbis say, k'habbik hen, midam kulam al achat. Tzaddik b'emunato yichyeh. That the prohet sought what was the one thing that everything stands on? Well, the one thing that everything stands on is faithfulness and it's Yitzchak who gives the access to that by his experience of having been breathed into and knowing that he is going to give up that breath and will need to be breathed into again, to put it as a image an embodied image. You're not going to breathe out unless you have the reliance on the one who will breathe into you again. And it will become realized down in Yosef, who is yesod, who is in the middle line, who also is the first one in the Bible to describe himself as a yireh ankin, as one who has yirah of G-d. It's very interesting. G-d described Avraham as having achieved yirah. In touching this consciousness of It could all be gone in a moment, when he brings Yitzchak to the Akeidah. But it's Yosef, who has this self-consciousness about himself being a yarhe, and the reapson is because hei sth eyesod, the turning outwards. He is the middle, thin line that carries down into expression. And it is so crucial for him as the Tzaddik to live faithfulness because –and that's the prime quality which becomes apparent in his life—because it's the faithfulness that allowing all of reality to continue to be present. And if my life, the lowest sefirot are the expression of these things in life and the planet—and in my life, if I in any way violate faithfullness and integrity, and reliability, so then really I'm undermining what allows the whole cosmos to continue to be. That's why yesod is so present to that. But if we turn to the upper spheres, where it's Avraham and Yitzchak and keter, so you see how those are the supernal consciousnesses, while in the lower realm, of netzach, hod and yesod, so they become expressed. But what I'm describing now is how the yirah of Yitzchak, who has become the knower of this tenuousness of life and how it all depends on this reliability, will later become revealed in Yosef and his life. But in Yitzchak, the prime revelation of it is simply, on the one hand, the experience of the love of G-d, but more primarily, I would say, the experience of the dread and the awesome nothingness which is the chashm over which all of life is always hanging. And this is what is so crucial and it's brought intot he world in the akeidah. Standing above YItchak, Avraham, who has so to speak breathed life into him, who has given him life, who is the manifestation and embodiment of G-d who has given him life, hold the knife over him, and there is nothing to say. He knows so deeply that there is nothing to say—he is silent! And it's not just because I'm ready to give up my life, I'm ready to give it up. But rather, he indeed lives the awareness that somehow profoundly, there really is nothing to say. IT's all in Your realiable and going care for me that I continue to exist, and if at any moment it's withdrawn, then there is nothing. There can aonly be me by You breathing into me my next breath. But when you do, no one experiences the joy as deeply as he does, of life, As we've explained, joy is not the world of Avraham—his is the world of pleasure. Joy is the world of Yitzchak. And of din, and of binah. Because it's in the transition from nothing to something in myself that I experience joy. We experience it in its model, so to speak, when we touch something new. Something new happens. The Rabbis say, When do you say Shehechiyanu? When you get something new. When there's a new fruit, a new holiday that hasn't been here for a year. A new seeing of a friend that you haven't seen for a long time. Why? Because joy, this is how the halachah describes it, that's a bracha made for simchah, because simchah is when there's chiddush, when there is something new. Because that's when we have the intensity of the experience of life given to us. The way that manifests is, "I haven't seen you in so long! Or: This fruit—unbelievable! It's almost as if it's emerged out of nothing. In the day-to-day, that's where we touch that, in the emergence out of nothing. And that's why we touch simchah there, because we're touching the eym ha banim smeycha and we're touching the being breathed into and being in the possibility of another heartbeat. So, what I'm speaking out is, there is almost an irony, that the one who stands in the deepest and greatest fear and trepidation for his next moment experiences love most deeply. This is why it's so much so that it's Yitzchak that when he is the first to love his wifr, He loves her in terms of her motherness and takes her into his mother's tent. Because in loving her, he becomes the expression of that giving of life. And that is the beignning of a loving connection. Yes it's rooted in the Avrahamic rooting in the oneness of all and the pleasure in that. Just like in a cople it's rooted in a oneness and the pleasure of that. But then the shift intoa giving love is in experiening each other as mother, that I am giving you support and life that I now can participate in this most marvelous continuum of love and life that is to be born in our own relationship, which is why he takes Rivka into his mother's tent and is consoled for the loss of his mother. He brings back into the world and into the relatinoship or embodies in their relatinoshp what it is he himself has an ongoing experience of. So now Sarah is gone, so RIvka will be.. this is when the smol becomes the tachat b'roshi, when the left becomes the support under my head that I should stand up straight. That the right hand reaching and hugging and bringing into unity, and the left hand supporting the head, that she or he should continue to stand with their head upright and their vision and personhood expressed. The great joy is there. That's where simchah is. It's when it's in tikkun; that's when love is born. And when it's in kilkul, that exclusivity, that elitism, separateness and apartness comes into being, the degredation and denigration of the left, which goes into sheli sheli, shelcha, shelcha.
You can see now clearly how a man such as Esav can be born with such a wrong consciousness of that. In that Esav is t he one who experiences life always as an antagonism. He's always having to hunt down what he needs to get. Esav born of Yitzchak, is the hunter, who is always needing to cleverly get by fighting and grabbing what it is he has decided himself to want and need. Ki tzayid b'fi. He is always tricking in order to get it and therefore he is always tired. Esav is the tired hunter, and it's the first time that word is used in the Bible. He is always tired. Why? Because his experience of separate entitness is other than what the world is and what the world is for. There is no for-ness in the world of Esav, there is no support in the experience of Esav. I've taken in the breath, and now I have to go with it. And everythign is against me, and everything is there for me to establish myself and to affirm myself and to create myselfa dn to become myself and all of the experiences which are , they draw from the right consciousness, but they become disconnect from Source realization that leads too this tremendous hunter mentality. A lot of this New Age mentality is like this: Get it. Go for it. And hunt it down, and experiencing life as antagnoistic to you. Well, maybe it's not New Age as such, but Western culture has a great deal which is born of this Esavian concept. And thereofre, in deed, it is inappropraite for Esave to have the bechorah, I think it's called the promignature, in English, because the bechora is the one who knows his life as having been giving to him. He is the first life. But he has none of that. So he is always tired and fighting and experiences life as antithetical. He doesn't have s'molo tachat l'roshi. He doesn't experience the absess as being a support for him to become himself, but rahter as an abandomnet. And therefore indeed, the Rabbis say, know he is the greatest honorer of his father. His honor of his father is always in paying off debts. His experience of life is you've given me what you gave me, now I have to pay you back, so now I'm not indebted to you, so now I can be on my own. So he honors his father. But the Rabbis say that what distinguishes him from Yaakov in the tale of their appearing before Yitzchak to get the brachot, he doesn't sound like Esav when Yaakov says father, please sit up. Esav only makes demands, and lives always in paying back demands. Making demands, and paying them off, paying off his debts. His whole experience of life is in that. And in that way he maintains his independence and separateness. I'll pay off my parents for what they gave me, I will show them honor, because that is indeed what is appropriate. Not as an act of love, but as an act of being able to push them aside, so I can stand up on my own two feet. And the more he pays back his parents—especially his father—so the more he able to pay back his father, so to speka, so the more he is able to experience his own independence. And the more lost he becomes as losing the joy of life supporting me and giving me a life to live.
If you just hold your breath, you'll get very tired very quickly. You can now appreciate how much the world of Yaakov will need to be a world in which it's held, both the world of the unity consciousnesses of Avraham and the separateness of the fear that Yitzchak brings into reality. To hold those in harmony becomes the life of Yaakov.
Here's where all these other elemnts of Yitzchak that we explored together become so real—his being the one to teach G-d mechila, forgiveness, You were always giving us life, and we were always in some sense in dedication to You, just by living it, we were so to speak giving to you what it was that you sought. Okay, you know, some people sinned, and they went off the path, and they went against your path, but how much time was there to really do that. And if you can't forgivce them for that, and even take half of those sins, I'll take them all upon me. Why? Because it's my ashes that sit upon the mizbeach. If you remember that piece from the Gemara that we explored. Because, after all, just the fact that we are living is a devotion to you. Just the fact of our holding on to life. Ribbon oshel olam, just our holding onto life gave me someone to love. Now I know we've been wrong and awry and messed up and polluted, I know, I know, but in giving us life and our accepting it, we acted towards you in love. Forgive us for all the distortions we made of it. Were we to be philosophical, it would be that possibility of evil is what made it possible for us to stand across from You so that You could love us. And so even when we chose it, you can let go of the punishment for that. Because it was, after all, what made it possible for us to be here at all. And I live the knowing of that, of all of life being a devotion to you. And I'm telling You, so to speak, no matter what it was. That's the end of time, Yitzchak's mechila, no matter what it was. And it's also what we saw in Yitzchak in his standing up against the Plishtim, who are an expression of It's all empty and meaningless. That empty and meaningless comes from not knowing that it's in G-d's faithfulness and reliability that He's giving us life. There's no meaning to this if it's just a thin, tenuous thread. How meaningful could a thin, tenuous thread after all, if it's meeting G-d always investing Himself in it. What is this? It's mamash nothing. And it really is meaningless, in the sense that it's totally meaningless that G-d had chosen it this way and not that way. You know, the world could have been an entirely different world. It could have been made entirely with other rules and other structures. Could have been. So it's meaningless. It only becomes meaningful as an act of love on the part of G-d to have chosen us and His faithfulness to it. (one hour)
So Yitzchak stands across from the Plishtim who are the "hollow-outers of reality"—so how meaningful could it be if we are always being called upon to make it? And all he does is dig the wells to expose the wellsprings of life that are bubbling up through reality of G-d's life0giving support of it. That's his primary activity in life of Yisrael. You can see much more clearly how he gifts the world with those digging of those wells that the Phlistim filled and blocked the access to that source of tlife. Peering through that thin line, life being supported by the one who is loving in its particularity and specificity. So that there would be born love, which can only be in particularity and specificity and devotion. And faithfulness.
This is really why it is yonati that comes after raayati because the yonah is the faithful mate. Achoti, raayati, yonati. I'm looking at your eyes, G-d, as the Zohar says, and I'm not letting go. I'm not breaking this glance. We're looking at each other in a perfect and devoted faithfulness . It's so marvelous because only out of raayati, of knowing that the chasm and therefore the specific beign which he's giving me, which could be lost in a slight deviation. I keep my eyes on him, looking in an infinite glance which knows no end. Because it goes all the way up to reisha d'lo ityadah, to the head which is never known, to the thought of my particular being that was there in a way which is so mysterious, that He should have chosen me and this life. Our glances stay locked one upon another in that faithfulness. That's why yonati is You can count on me, No matter what. This I swhy the Maharl taught us, really Yitzchak has the highest deveikut with G-d; there really is no distance between them, Because he experiences most deeply G-d holding him all the time. Supporting him, But ironically only supporting so that he should become one who should stand independently on his own. It is an irony that is impossible to bridge, just know that. and it's deeper level is going higher to the place of yonati where I know his faithfulness and reliability. That will become revealed in Yosef. Bnei emanut, will become revealed in Yosef, which then enters into the malchut and David, along with all of the other elements that we've learned. But the tamati, which is the simple acceptance of life as it is, and the ability to reflect it and experience being supported by it and being supportive of it, that's the world of Yaakov. Because Yaakov, as the tamim, is the one who is what a tamim is, simply the one who, as the Maharal defines it, simply reflects life as it is. Those are the simple people. It doesn't come out with an agenda, trying to force it; that's Esavian. But rather, allows life to flow through him and is guided by it and is responsive to it. That's why tamati, temimut, that ingenuousness, also is interpreted by the Rabbis as teomati, my twin. And it is so true, that for a tamim, so the other is in a sense like a twin. Llike, I see my reality in yours. You see your reality in me, There is like a mirroring that happens. This is whole new element which comes in the experience of not only life as supporting me to become my own, but my—in the middle line, now—my response of interaction with it, it's there and I'm here and I'm feeding into it, and it's feeding into me, we're twins, We don't have two different faces. I see my face reflected in reality and I find reality reflected in me. And yes, it has a particular expression through me. Yes, I have Yitzchak, I haven't lost it. But I don't stand in antagonism to it, like Esave, trying to force it into my pattern. But rather, I live it. And I experience the flow and back-and-forth, which now is the breathing in and out that becomes the world of the tamim of Yaakov. Breathing in and out. So where does my life begin and end? Where does the world's life begin and end. It's not two realities. We are one being and one consciousness in the organismic realization which is what we saw of Yaakov. That's really what a tamim is, a person who has that kind of innocence, and sometimes you can mistake the tamim's way as having only a vague sense of self, because he's so much in the line and rooted in the sense of anavah. Which is the highest reach. And so it might look like this guy doesn't have his own life. Get out there and hunt down your own achievements. Stand up on your own two feet and do what you need to do and fight against all—and he doesn't live like that. He lives with whatever comes to him on his path and he lives that. Every step of the way that he walks, he walks with a consciousness of G-d guiding his steps in great responsiveness of that interaction. It all becomes mirrored. It's an experience that a couple can have also, and when they're in full support of each other, not in a way that you have your project, and I'm in full support of that, honey, I'm here for you. That's nice. That's ezer, I'm here for you. Ezer with the knegdo, smolo tachat l'roshi, that's very nice. But there's another reality which is very different and I bless you all to experience where it's not I'm supporting you, honey, nor am I holding you close and we are one. But there is something like we are a twin. It's not me supporting your project. We're mirroring and reflecting each other in a way in which there's a light reflecting out of us by virtue of our being both in one place. That's tamati and teomati, which is connected to the keter. Again, it's in the middle line. We're not relating to the keter as someone that we're utlizing the keter together. It's when the couple are not using the context of their commitments to life, etc. But they're living it out. Who is the giver and who is the taker? Who is the mashpiah. And who is the mekabel, who is supporting who becomes completely lost and merged because we're looking at each other in a mirror. And not by violating the other's separateness, but by becoming merged and joined. This is the great tikkun of Moshe and Aharon, who became in a sense, the first brothers who lived life rightlya dn become the expression of the tikkun for the sun and the moon in giving over the establishment of the new moon in the way that they did when G-d says, the two of you together speak this. And they each stand across from each other saying, "You teach me, You teach me." "You teach me, You teach me." "You teach me, You teach me." Until then that breathing in, breathing out Rashi describes, they didn't speak at all and a voice came out from between them as if they were speaking. That's the twinning of support—I don't know if that's the right word—it's the twinning of beings that happened in Moshe and Aharon. But this reality of Yaakov allows for that to come into being. Moshe and Aharon will come after Yaakov in netzach and hod. And it allows it to be by virtue of this experience of temimut. And Yaakov (sic) is really like that although he looks like he'es manipulating and an imachinator, etc. He is just always giving everyone whatever they're asking for. I know it doesn't really look like that in the stories. Esav, what do you really want? Being the first born who's always living in the consciousness of his existence having been giving him and always being given him. What do you want? A bowl of porriage. Or you can drink it down, like Rashi says, like a camel, and hold it and then go out on your own. Rashi literally says that what he asked was that it be poured down his mouth. Pour that down my mouth. The verb used there is the one used to describe in feeing a camel. Just let me wean (sic) and go out. What do you want? Yeah, going to go out an conquer. He doesn't take or give anything that is not the reflection of the truth of what simply is. It wasn't out of agenda. A reflection and a mirroring of what is. He's then become the place of what Yitzchak and Rivka together can bear the expression rightly in the temimut of Yaakov.
And then as we saw, all the struggles play out in Yaakov, that merging with what is, and becoming very specific and realized in his particularness and all those things we spoke of. Yaakov becoming Yisrael, and going through his own process of tzimtzum, of pushing aside the false gods, of leaving behind that which is not really his, and fiercely fighting for that which is, and then becoming the li rosh, the head for G-d's appearance in the world by having clarity of where life has to be taken to. And this is the deep secret of where a tamim can move to. From just mirroring to actually becoming the consciousness of creation that guides it to its next place. But always an awareness that that next place has already been embedded in the reality of what is. So that's I'm building myself. I'm not building something other than what is in life, but directing it, so he beomces then the reflection of G-d in that, guiding things towards where they need to go in Yisrael.
Esav is so present. He is so..present. I mean, And there's something like the ayef that's interesting because I've been experimenting with not thinking about in tow hours, and it's awesome, because I have so much more energy, I can get so much more accompished, for my kids, everything, as long as I'm not thinking ahead. But this Esav energy, which also exists here, and also exists in every interaction I have outside of my space. Aren't you about to do..? It's so crazy. I feel like sometimes we just have to be like Yitzchak, and I'm cutting off everything so I can have it strong enough so I can be Yaakov. Otherwise, it's this constant battle.
What I'm hearing is your depiction from your own life of an attitude of an orientation towards what's coming up next as opposed to being present to what is. If you remember we had a very true understanding around Yitzchak as being the one who is able to like in az, which the is-ness of things. Because he is so deeply aware of G-d giving each moment now. He's always in the now that way. Because the next moment may not be here. There is absolutely nothing holding that moment in place. So all there is is now. So Yitzchak very much is –it was a good chop, akartol, the power of now. Because the now comes from power, it comes from gevurah. The point of gevurah is that ist's an ongoing realization of G-d giving power to this moment now, and the thoughts around what is or what was are not at all relevant to Yitzchak. He is not an historically-oriented personhood. He's joyousness. Although we don't really see it in his lifetime. But the way the Zohar describes, is that his simchah is something which describes his presence to now. And you're right that the worries of what's coming up especially can really derive from a wrong, just a slight shift in the experience of I don't know what's next, I only know what's now. And I'm scared about that. And how are we going to handle that..It's a very slight and subtle shift, because of that same root, goes to that other place of Esav, or alternatively, goes to the place of Yaakov, who is What is right now, and I'm in that, and all of life is supporting that, and I'm simply living out all that life is, and reflecting it. And at one with it in one organismic living of G-d's life flowing through all at once. That's why Shema YIsrael is born of him. Tha'ts why when he meets Yosef he speaks that out. That's why when he meets Yosef he says, Shema yisrael, hashem elokeinu hashem echad, it's all been unified in one direction. His consciousness is more historic in that sense, but out of a realization that it's all right here. But in life, and that's soemthing we need to fight against and grab for. But yeah, I hear what you're saying, it's very easy to shift into what's coming up next, davka because you have a rooted consciousness and He's just giving it to me right now.
Mamash the day right after Purim, everybdy's like Pesach! What about Purim?
Yeah, I sat with ulpana teachers and the question was what is it for you between Purim and Pesach. You can imagine what it is for most people. But for me, it goes very deep. It doesn't disappear.
What used to worry me a lot, and still a little. What am I going to be? My potentials? What am I doing with it? Oh, I am just going to stay at home and raise children. If I don't think in that way of potential and choosing what I'm going to do, and be, then I can have simchah, because that's where it is. It's so foreign to the world I was raised in.
I want to say there's a very subtle and not simple interraction between the world of present and the world of dreams. What I mean is that a person who is present is not meant to have cut off his life to dreams. There is the bechina of choosing and stepping beyond and of dreaming about what could be and the interraction between them is very subtle and very crucial to be lived right. I can reflect that I know of what you speak. It's a tremendous—on the one hand, joyous, you couldn't have the joy if you weren't having the joy of the specific and particular life you are living. There were a myriad men you could have married, types of kids you could have had, houses you could have lived in, If they were all possibilties and were all there at once, then there would be no joy in that. Nor could there be love in that. Because there wouldn't be specific in that. There just wouldn't. So in knowing that, one can begin to repair and heal some of the incidious whisperings, But it could be otherwise, You could have had it different. There could be so much more.
And on the other hand, once one is able to truly and joyousles live in the presence of what is, and to reflect it and mirror it and be with it and see it as a breathing and a breathing out of what is, that is Yaakov, then can be born Yosef, who is a dreamer. Up where things will go. And his dreaming is not an Esavian dreaming. It's a dreaming which dreams out what is really already embedded in and present in the reality as it is. And if we live like that, then our dreams becomes authentic dreams authentic to our lives and they cease to frustrate us. They become invitations towards and if we really believe in them then we have the confidence of, then ultimate they will be realized. Not because they are dreamed out of an agenda, but because they are being dreamed out of Yaakov. Then they become a path to be drawn towards. And the the most incredible thing happens for Yosef. He dreams these dreams, and the dreams themselves in telling them, actually create a dynamic which make it possible for them to be realized. It's the most incredible thing. If he had kept his dreams to himself, they probably wouldn't have hated him so much. But somehow in telling the dream, all of life becomes participant in the dynamic in bringing them to their realization.
Yosef's aspect of the dreamer is the next level in the emergence of love and moving towards, the emergence of love and the cosmic realization of it. (1:30) Yosef, is by his very bechina, the quality that defines him, and his name, is "there's more." He's davka born out of Yaakov, and is the main progeny of Yaakov as the verse describes: ele toldot yaakov, yosef. These are the generations of Yaakov—Yosef. And everything around Yosef. It's a beautiful irony. Out of temimut of Yaakov, and the clarity that he gains in becoming Yisrael, and all that we spoke of with Leah nad becoming the specific personhood. But out of that, and it's clear and authentic and integruous. Out of that is born the one whose who reality is outwards bound. Is connecting to, it's yesod. Out of myself. New expanded boundaries by virtue of who I will now relate to, and he's always seeking relationship. He's the dreamer and he is also able to interpret dreams, because he does not come with an agenda that he's received from Yaakov, but he is simply reflecting what is. And those are the only people who can really interpret a dream. (1:32) are the ones who are so connected communicatively to what is there and can listen and hear it and speak it through them and become a conduit for it. But then he can dream dreams without them frustrating him—when am I going to realize my potential?—sof, sof, you don't get any of that from Yosef, he justs lives life, and it guides him, and he does have a vision and a dream and that is apparently there, as a vision and a dream, but it is authentic of who he is—he dreamed it—it wasn't like a conscious choosing of it, he like dreamed it. I see this all the time in my teaching and in my lviing. Stop trying to impose upon it, just let it speak through you. That's what all this teaching is from. Let it be through you. I know that my best planned classes, so to speak, are not the ones in which I furrowed my eyebrows and tried to figure it out, but when I sat in quiet and asked, what's next? And to be with that and go with that. That becomes the Yosef and connects now beyond the boundaries of himself and can speak out. That is so much present in our relatinoship with G-d Who awaits that of us as those who are rooted in the reality that He is speaking through us.
So in the context of dreams, a most fascinating thing. And it has to do with where we are in the year. Because the Tlamud tells of certain people who are the Yosef people. They are all the people who have the word chen in them. Chen is that kind of a simple ingenuous beauty that is not trying to seek to manipulate through itself or to gain control. Like the chen of a little baby. We've spoken about this. YOsef has chen. And in the Talmud, the "chen" people are Yosef people. Rebbe Yochanan says he's a descendent of Yosef. So one of the deep feature of Yosef and the descendents of him is that they don't haveto worry about ayin harah, about people looking at them bad and being jealous of them. Well, I don't know about the jealous part, but they don't have to worry about the ayin harah. Yosef himself only had eyes for what was his. So Rebbe Yochanan, because of this, was able to sit outside the mikvah, after women had immersed, and they would come out pure, and because he was very beautiful, he wanted their children to be as beautiful as he, and that reality should mirror, so to speak, something of the beauty that he himself held. That he could share it and sought to share it. Not, chas v'shalom, to gain control of, but to share the beauty that's his. That's a very Yosef sort of thing, sharing. So people asked him, aren't you worried about ayin harah? And he said, No, I'm among the descendents of Yosef.
So Rebbe Yochanan tells a story of someone else who's name is chen, and that's Choni Hameagel. And the story is told os Choni Hameagel., when most of Adar had finished, and there wasn't enough rain, so he went outside and drew a circle—you know the story—so he went outside and went in the circle and said, G-d, You're bringing rain! And some drops came down, and he said, No! I'm not talking about that kind of rain! Everyone's watching me! Everyone's waiting! Bring down the rain! It's like the self-involved side of Yosef, where he reaches his tikkun of They're watching, Okay, G-d brings rain. So Rebbe Yochanan goes on and tells how Choni Hameagel ended his life. Choni Hameagel, Rebbe Yochanan says, his whole life, kol yamav haya mitztaer, his whole life he was in sorrow, in pain over a pasuk, which is Shir hama'alot b'shuv adonai et shivat tzion hayinu k'cholmim. He couldn’t get the pasuk. Now, we can get a little more of a taste of why (1:38:16). How could a person dream for seventy years. It's almost like, how do you hold on to the dream when you have to be so in now. When they were in exile, how did they hold the dream for seventy years. So, the gemara says that he was walking along the way and he saw a man planting a carob tree. And he asked him, when is it going to give fruit. So the man answered, "Oh, it will take about seventy years." So he said, "Oh, come on. Why are you investing in now for something which will only blossom in seventy years?" So the man said, "Listen, I came into a world with carob trees, I leave a world with carob trees." That's the historic consciousness. Yeah, you know, dreaming doesn't mean not investing in now. Dreaming means investing in now. What am I called upon to do now? Planting the carob tree. What gain will you get from it? None, but the fact that I dreamed and I invested. What is that? That's life. Andt hen he's taught the meaning of beig yesod as a conduit for life. Yes, you have received, and yes, you give over, and yes, what moves you from receiving to giving over is the dream, but chalilah v'chas, that the dream would take you out of investing in the now, and the only way the dream could ever be is by being joyously present to what is now. That's Choni Hameagel. I don't know what he got and what he didn't get because it said that he fell asleep and that he woke up and he saw little children playing around the carob tree. And then he started figuring it out, and they were pulling fruits off the car tree and eating it. And then the story goes on—a most amazing story—and he realizes that he's been asleep for seventy years! And he's now seeing the dream realized. And he goes home and he says, "I'm home!" And it's his grandchildren—they've never seen him; they don't know who he is. So he goes to the Beis HaMidrash, and he hears them saying, "Wow, what an amazing day! We're getting everything right! It's just like it used to be when Choni Hameagel was around! So he says, "It's me, I'm here!" And nobody believes him. So they asked him all the kashiyas, and he answers all the kashias great. But still, no one can really understand him and give him honor. So he goes out of his mind, or he's chalash daatey, he gets sick or goes out of his mind, and the Talmud says that they prayed for him and he died. About this it says ochavutah omitutah. Either one with whom I can live with one as a friend, or death. What is that? Exactly it. Any kind of relating outside of ourself is a dream. The dream is beyond what is now. And if I can't have a dream, then I'd rather be dead. If I can't extend beyond what I am, then I'd rather be dead. If I can't move to more, I'd rather be dead. Becaues he lives in that movement, because that's yesod. But what he had to be taught was that's only realizable by being present to what is. That's the teaching of Yaakov.
So, yes, dream on, but don't let those ever frustrate and tire you from being what is. That is the only way for any of that could ever be. It must grow out of here. Otherwise it will just be the meshinations (sic) of your own mind. (1:43:19) and the world will always be in antagonism to it and you'll always be in the fight and in the hunt and ultimately realize like Esav will, that far more real is what G-d gives than what I artificially try to impose. That's really the secret of loving life and loving Him Who gives it to us at every moment. I bless us all to be able to hold that I'm not sitting here like a realized human being. I'm sitting here as a fellow traveller.
I might add one more thing about this kind of a Yosef consciousenss in that there's outward moving. So it's told in the kabbalah that there are imminent light, orot pnimim, and transcendent ligth, orot makifim. Lights of imminence are what we've already achieved and presence to what we've accomplished. The lights of the makifim are the lights of that which is awaiting us beyond where we are. It's the lights which dreams come from and further possibilities come from. So I have a teacher who is very knowledgable in Kabbalah (he's also had been in contact with physicists and other people although that's not what's important to me) What's important to me to share is that there's a realization that on a ceratin level, since Darwin, who opened up a consciousness of things unfolding and progressing. And in a sense, the world of religion as da'at found that extremely anethema because religion has a tendencey on insisting of maintaining structures and traditions and things as they are. That's the depth to the objection. Darwin offered an altertive to seeing the world as something which was the Creator intervening and making it. That's only one aspect, the surface aspect of what's wrong with Darwin in the world of religion. But more profoundly what's wrong with Darwin in the world of religion is that things are continuing to unfold that you've never really arrived at the end point and that as it becomes applied also to the times of knoweldge, historical periods, so historicism is an outgrowth of Darwinism. There are different periods in which people have different types of consciousness and thinking about things and ways of thinking about them. And that scientific paradigms shift, and what we thought was the right paradigm for understanding life and existence is no longer, and we've past beyond that, etc. (sic). So that is antithetical to a traditional society which seeks to maintain and hold onto. But what is kind of a question which I think has become real for people is as we look at that and we see that as far as we get in science, so there is always something that doesn't work out, so then we have to think it in a different formula and a different theory and eventually a whole different paradigm for understanding. So as we look back at history and see this has happened so many times so you kind of get frustrated. When are we going to get it right? When are we going to know the truth?
So in the kabbalah there is a model which is a depiction of how reality works. And that is that every makif, when it becomes a pnimi, there's a new makif that appears. Meaning, everytime the beyond what I now know becomes what I now know, every time what I couldn't figure out, I now figure it out, so then there is something else that still needs to be understood. So that's how it works in mind. And in life, it's always like that, that whatever we acquire and become present to and comprehend, so there's a new makif, something which is now appeared. And in the kabbalah there's an endless makifin. And every time a makif becomes a pnimi, there's a new makif, and it goes on and on. Now to look at that you might say, My gosh, it's endlessly frustrating—I'll never know the truth. Basically what you're telling me is, no matter what I acquire and comprehend, there will always be a makif. Basically, what' you're telling me is that there is no knowing the truth to the end point. Or having the final accomplishment. So, yes, and now there's two ways to go. One way is so, why bother, if I'm never going to know, so why should I even try to invest in trying to understand. So when that becomes that yeush, that despair, over the possibility leads to a renouncing of that whole process, that's where it becomes the other side of despair and of giving up on life, at whatever leve, and that person might appear to function and might be having a very good time, but he's basically living life from despair.
But there's another root, and that is the root of Yosef. And that root of Yosef is that I continue to seek and I continue to invest and I continue to look for knowedlge and understanding not as an act that is motivated by the acquistion and the accomplishment but rather as a living in investiment and connection to, see how I'm investing and connecting are one. In living and investing in. What? What is next? But the what is next created a dynamic, the dynamic of Yosef, which is to always be investing in. Ah, but now I have accomplished it? Ah, but now there is something else to invest in and move towards. And it's so marvelous and beautiful. But the dynamic that G-d creates is that we're always investing and we're always moving towards and we're always aspiring and always in love and only as an act of love moving beyond ourselves and what is a given. This is the depth of why, when Yaakov sought to sit in contentment, she bikesh leshev b'shalvah. Kafatsalav, rugzo shel yosef. Then the anger and tza'arot of his son, Yosef, jumped upon him. This is a statement of the way reality is: If you, Yaakov, seek to choose contentment, then you've copped out on life! You've now become the tamim who's simply reflecting what is without a dream. So let me bring someone now who dreams into tyour life and everything now that will derive from that dream which is all of the issues and problematics which will need to be worked through so that the world will move to its next level.
But you understand now how perfectly appropriate that is of kafatsalav, rugzo shel yosef dafka. Because Yosef is the dreamer dreaming beyond where things are. Yaakov simply reflected what is. His dream was a dream of angels going up and going down. And the midrash says that when G-d invited him: Yaakov, why don't you go up? And the image there was that many peoples have ruled this planet, but now you come and you rule it. But he says, "No, no." Because Yaakov doesn't dream beyod. He simply dreams what is. But Yosef, he dreams what's next and what's beyond. Yosef brings the dynamic of moving ahead and investing in that future, not because I will achieve it and acocmplish it but because it's the dynamic of loving that's always calling us to move beyond. Why would I want to know knowledge which will never be complete? Because I love knowledge. Why would I want to know G-d if that knowledge will never be complete? Because I love G-d, and that movement towards Him always is my mode of connecting with Him. Why would I want to my wife if I could never really know her? Because in the seeking to know her and in the movement always towards her, I manifest and realize a lvoing connection which is between us. And so love can only exist with dreams, with the makif, with stepping out from, with Yosef, but it can only live as love and not as frustration and anger if it's lived in the patient unfolding and the investiment in the now which is born of the temimut of Yaakov. That is what opens up Yosef, that is what opens up the world to its prime being as a movement of expansion.
The Rabbis actually dscribe Yosef as a flame. And that aspect of a flame is what enables him to create his brotherhood between his brothers, and also for what we're describing now is simply is the perfect reflection of who he is, like a flame has nothing of its own. It's simply a burning, ongoing, moving past, exposing of the energy which is embedded within, and sending it back to its origin and source, so is Yosef, but that's the depiction of all of relationship and connecting out of ourselves to he who stands across from us. Moving out, it's in the process and dynamic of that movement that the relationship is formed. And as soon as it becomes static and stale, so then the togetherness is ended. It becomes two ensconced entities that stand apart from one another. But in the aspiring and in the connection to and reaching out towards infinitely, is the connecting and the unified, which is his life. And not coincidentally, it is Rebbe Yochanan in a halachic part of the Talmud, who says that aish—for reasons which we won't go into now about why that's halachically siginificant—aish she eyn bo mamahs. Fire has no mamashut of its own. It is simply the process of the unfolding that is the crucial transition point and element which is present and must always must be present in relationship as the yesod is the foundation of it in that reaching out. And it forms the transition point between the temimut of Yaskov from which it draws into the realization and manifestation of the sharing of life which is David and malchut.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: Avram's transition into Avraham and the emergence of Yitzhak and David, as a process of oscillation between personal fulfillment and the loss of self into the seamless unity of all.
Episode Transcript:
What I want to share with you is the first meeting of G-d and man. Everything unfolds from there and comes out of the way in which G-d first contacted us and it's His first meeting with us in Creation outside of Gan Eden. See, after man was created, the first contact that G-d has with man is to take him and to place him in the Garden of Eden. He took him and placed him in the Garden of Eden. And the Rabbis are not satisfied with the simple sense of the verse which sounds like He took him physically, and they explain that what G-d did was He seduced man; He spoke to him. It was His first speaking to him, and Rashi tells it that He took him with beautiful things, beautiful speakings, and tempted him to go in to the Garden of Eden.
(What's the word?)
Piteyhu l'hikanes. And as we know, man bought in, and he went into the garden of Eden. And were it not that he had chosen that, so then G-d would not have forced his hand. And then, when it says, Vayanichehu b'gan eden, so, that's where he actually puts him down physically into the Garden of Eden and literally rests him there. So, the beautiful thing to connect to is that way in which G-d here has renounced His all-powerful presence to become One who seeks to arouse; meaning, that there is no use of power here, there is only a desire that's expressed and when that desire is expressed, so the arousal of man that he should accede. But in his acceding, so then he acts as an independent agent. To me, this is mamsh the entire Torah in a nutshell.
And the next verse, which has G-d commanding man, and telling him—it's almost an ironic verse—because, it says, "And then G-d commanded man, telling him You can eat from all the trees in the Garden." And only in the following verse, He says, "From the Tree of Knowledge you cannot eat." So, it's almost the first command is, You can have everything. It's all here for you. And only after there does G-d delimit what it is that he cannot have.
So, if you remember, last time we were with Avraham Avinu, and the root of all in the consciousness of oneness, which is the great blissful pleasure of the at-oness with the ground of being. And this is Avraham's path of oneness. And it's called in the Chassidic literature, based on a verse in Shir Hashirim, which has G-d knocking on our door, saying Pitchu li, achoti, ra'ayati, yonati, tamati. Open the door, my sister, my lover, my dove, my percfect twin. These four levels of calling G-d to us begin with the level of achoti, which is that which is the knowing of the perfect, seamless onenesss with His being. And the Rabbis idenitify Avraham Avinu with achoti, my sister, with the verse, Acchot lanui ktana, v'shadayim, eyn la. We have a young sister and she has no breasts yet. And the midrash says that this is Avraham. Because Avraham in his most primal position is the sister; meaning, in the language of the Chumash, the connected one, the at-one one; in Hebrew, achot is taking two things and drawing them together. Ichui is the language of that. So, he's the sister and she has no breasts. And this has to do, as we saw with Yitzchak, has to do with the ability to nurse, by the awareness of there being another to whom I give, which is the origination of atah.
Now, the truth is, Avraham passes through two pathways; first being Avram, and then becoming Avraham. Now it's important to note the difference. Avram means quite the opposite of what Avraham is. Avram is supernal father, being the one in which all is at one in perfect equivilation, hashva'ah, in perfect equivalency. He has no outward turning; he simply is—as we explored aspects of Avraham in the context of anavah. That's Avram. But then G-d changes his name to Avraham, the place he does this is with the introduction of Yitzchak into his life. If you remember where it's told to him that he will have his son by Sarah, so there G-d changes his name and tells him that his name is Avraham, which means the father of many nations—Av hamon goyim. Avraham is the one who becomes outwardly-turned and is then able to nurse. He so to speak receives his shadayim, his ability to nurse others. And in that, Avraham becomes the gilui of the hey, which is the five ways in which we become able to speak, gutteral, labial, palatal, if you know then whatever they are, but there are five.
Hey becomes his opening and the aperture outwards, which begins with the world of binah, which as we learned is the first hey of G-d's name, which as we learned with Yitzchak is the world of the root of Yitzchak, which is the turning out l'hotzi davar mitoch davar. The eym habanim s'mecha, the joyous mother of children, who will later become Leah. But Avraham becomes invested with this aspect of Yitzchak when he gets the hey, and therefore is told that Yitzchak is going to be born of him. That hey, which is the breath, the power of breathing, really, which emerges from the seamless wonder of unity, now becomes the ability to breathe. And all of our in-breath and out-breath, all of our ongoing experience of leaving and coming back, of reconnecting to our source and going back into it and then drawing from it into our separate unique reality and existence. That breath is the letter hey which is only there added to the name of Avraham to introduce the power of giving, the power of relating to. And it becomes the final letter of the words atah, which is a word descrbing Avraham in a verse that says, Atah coehn l'el elyon, You are the Cohen to the supernal G-d, that verse which is in a chapter of Tehillim, which is describing Malkitzedek and Avraham, is interpreted by the Rabbis as atah cohen l'el elyon, You, Avraham, have become the Cohen to the supernal G-d. But in becoming the Cohen to the supernal G-d, you have become one who now has the power of giving, by virtue of incorportaing into your being the power of atah, of you-ness there being an other that will be seen by you. That you experience as other by knowing the boundaries of your own independent, individuated exisistence and the reverence and honor for that of an other. This is Avraham's transition form Avram, in which he is simply the chochmah, the bitul, the abnegation, and the ayin, which is turning towards the keter of seamless oneness to become the one who will now have the possibility of doing chesed, of doing chesed, by incorporating into him the power of gevurah, and of the binah, which is the outwards turning. So that it's perfectly appropriate that at the time when he's told of the birthing of Yitzchak, and of course his brit milah, etc. (sic) that he is also given that hey which allows him to turn outwards.
But the amazing thing about breath and otherness which we were exploring last time is that it requires a space, an empty space, which is distance and creates a world of longing and of need. And the most primal need that we have is one which we experience every moment is of breath. Breath is the ongoing reminder to us of our separateness from our source of being. It's the ongoing embodiment of the separateness of our source of being. You may be able to breath slowly, or cease breathing for a certain amount of time. But in the end, you'll need to renew that activity, and in that being ongoingly reminded of the distance between you and your source. And the experience as yourself as other. It's the constant reminder of our death, and it is for the Rabbis, more than anything else, the indication of whether one is alive or dead. They determine whether someone is covered by a pile of an avalanche and who has his face exposed. The way you determine whether you continue to act to rescue him or not is by holding a feather to his nose, and just like like was blown into us through our nose, so when that nose ceases to exude life, and that interaction which is the indication of separateness ceases, only then have we been confirmed as being dead. There are all kinds of issues of halachah in this. But the point is that is the indication of death, because then we would have gone back to our oneness with the source of life. But as long as we're here, we're breathing in that ongoing interraction. And this is why so much of the kabbalah revolves around the length of the face and the length of the nose.
This is, in a sense, why G-d says to Adam HaRishon, that you will eat from the bread of the ground by the sweat of your nose, basically. Zayat apecha toch halechem. Because now you've made a rupture, and therefore the kind of work you'll need to do will be different than the work that I had originally intended for you. You will be met with the world as antagonistic with you, rather than a world which will cooperated with you; a world that has thorns and thistles, and not just a world in which you speak the will of G-d through the mouth of prayer and it rains, and what grows is what you need and you pluck the fruits and they are yours. But the indication of that is in the nature of the nose and what happens with the nose.
(Laughing) I have a tendency to make these things comic, but I'm going to restrain myself. But the whole issue is around arich anpin and ze'er anpin. But the point is there. This, by the way, is why we wish people health, asutah, when they sneeze. Basically, it's will you get a next breath, that's really where it comes from. It comes from us—labriut and gezuntheit—it's in the midrash, in the Tanchumut from the first century. Because we don't know if you'll get a next breath. Will you get back to the in-breath? On a very real level, we experience it this way. The out-breath is the loss of self to, and the in-breath is the taking back of life. This is why so much of intuitive thinking happens in what I call ithe wisdom of the out-breath. That's how I experience it. I wonder if that's how others experience it also. But the intuitive messages I get come when I breathe out, and I feel it in my throat. That's how I experience it. So I started calling it, when I notice it, the wisdom of the out-breath.
(Just to remind myself so that I would have a name for breathing out.) Breathing in already encourages the activity of the logical mind, the working it out, of the side of individuation. Breathing in, out. The hey, which is the hey of breath. Now the Chumash describes that the first breath—ruach elokim mrachefet al peni hamayim—that there's a breath of G-d, the wind, the spirit of G-d that hovers above the depths and the Zohar says that the ruach elokim mrachefet is the letters of met rapach, the death of the rapach, which has to do with the breaking the vessels—I think it's mistaken, because there is too much light and vessels broke.
That's a very negative way of looking at it, and I have a more positive interpretation, and that is when the greatness—there's a consciousness of the oneness of G-d, which is a consciousness which a vessel as a vessel cannot hold, and when the glory of that vision is seen, then the vessel must give up it's vessel-ness. That's the real breaking of the vessels, they must give up their vessel-ness. And they do, and they die, that's the kiss of death, which the Tzaddikim are zocheh to. That's the real shvirat hakelim. And as long as the ruach elokim is mrechefet, as long as the spirit of G-d, the wind of G-d is hovering, so then the kelim are broken and the letters mrechefet are met rapach. That these rapach nitzotzin, these two hundred eighty-eight sparks which get dispersed when the vessel loses its vesselness, live in death, and then they're drawn by the breath of G-d, back towards Him, so in a sense, every time we're breathing, so we're breathing toward that; we're breathing from that. So that there will be that reunification, which is done b'tikkun, whereby we are able to live out our lives as independent entity, as atah, and as we once talk in kissing G-d, by the breath which is breathed out, and breathed in, breathed out, breathed in.
So in a sense it's Avram's transition into Avraham which gives him the power of creativity and the second stage in the love of G-d, which we know from the Rambam, which is a lover of G-d is one who not only lives in the bliss of the connectedness to Him but also has great desire to spread this pleasure among others. As the Rambam teaches, It is the way of a lover to desire to share that love with others, to spread it, to spread it. That is the second side of Avram when he becomes Avraham, when the element of distance and gap and chasm between myself and other and myself and G-d becomes revealed. That is the bechina of tzimtzum and the side of din. And as we've seen, the great irony is that it is the side of din that love originates in its manifestation. It's the side of chesed in which love is rooted in its oneness, but it's the side of din when love becomes manifest in the experience of distance and longing and desire, that is the hey, the breathing out, the hey which becomes ahavah, which simply means, av hey. Father who has two heys. Supernal source, it's the hey of the out-breath, the hey of the in-breath. That's what that word means.
So it's from the vantage point of Yitzchak that Avraham learned love, and it's Yitzchak himself that becomes a lover of another living human being, as we saw in the tragic story of Avraham and Sarah, that it is not until Yitzchak that there will be a man that will love his wife. When he greets her after the story of the camels, and sees her, and must see the camel rather than her, in order that he see the gap—as we learned about camels—that he see the withdrawn aspect of life, which is gemilah, which is the weaning from the at-oneness with the mother, which is when he looks towards Rivka coming on the horizon, if you remember the humorous description we once gave of that where she's coming up on the horizon out of an entire Torah reading that has so much to do with camels, which literally means the ability to separate and wean—that is that animal is so important there—he looks and he sees not Rivka, but he sees camel. So if you're seeking the romance of this story, you're disappointed.
But that's because they don't know that the secret of love is in appreciating the distance and the difference.
And so he sees camel and that is what his own reality is. Being, as we learned, of his being the first man who became camel—Vayigamel—first man to be weaned, and first man to experience the distance, from Avraham's form, breasts, so to speak, and then he sees her, as a camel. And then only after that can see her, from the gap, the chasm he sees here. This is so crucial for appreciating marriage; this is so crucial for appreciating relationship with G-d. And the nature of how he's made a world in which in order for there to be love, there must be gap. And there's only a gap in order that there should be love. Always be appreciating that.
I had this with a couple I'm working with just working with them in their coming to gradual realization that she pushes all of his buttons and he pushes all of her buttons, mamash. He shows no appreciation, typical male issue, men feel like it means giving up power and control if they show appreciation. He shows none. He's also a very intellectual kind of person. And even after I did an intimate conversation with them of reflective listening in which she expressed her desire for that and how much of her worth depends on that, all he could say was I hear you, and then he violated all of the rules of the conversation, But I don't understand you. He's so separated from her. How could it be that your sense of worth depends on me? He, on the other hand, experiences her as always incarcerating and isolating him. And she does. She won't let him go out of the house. Perfect match. He's unappreciative, she holds him back. So in asking her, what does this remind you of? This experience of his face and what this looks like. Her parents were so unappreciative. She was always giving out, and they were never willing to acknowledge it at all, They would always demand more. And in asking him, he said, My father used to hold my hands behind my back and beat me. That's what it means to be held back for me. So they were totally frightened by this because it was completely inappropriate. And I looked at this truly and honestly with conviction, I hold it as a perfect shidduch, because the calling of marriage isn't the calling of shalvah, contentment and only the aspect of at-oneness, that's achot. That's brother and sister, we're siblings, which is beautiful, and I don't belittle it, because it's there in a couple at its root. But the love will only will come when the severence happens. And the severence only comes in the most intense and fearful relationships when each of them is actually standing opposite each other and push all their buttons. How are we going to bridge this gap? It's the biggest one there could be. But in the transition to realizing the power of knegdo as the origin of love, the power of otherness that I am separated from my source and in human life I'm separated from my other and we've built up an opposition. Now we can begin. This is the truth of what the Rabbis meant by, greater is the ba'al tshuvah than the perfect tzaddik. Greater is the one who has experienced distance than the one who is always at one with. Because of the fierceness of the love. The power of the love to overcome the chasm and reach out of one's self to reunite. And there's a whole psychology of this that is a completion of what they hadn't done when they were children, what they hadn't done when as children, and there's already shifts with them and I know other couples that are also realizing this. And just noting that and realizing that. So he can offer her that, not necessarily because he understand it, but because he accepts that as her reality. And out of love he offers that. She the same. And then they unite in a deeper unity that underlies the apparent and overt differences.
This is the way it is for us and G-d all the time, It's the in-breath, out-breath. It's Avraham's hey. And Yitzchak coming to this consciousness in the akeidah, when his source of Life was drawn for him, when he was told in that dramatic moment, I am no longer with you, you're a dead man. Only by virtue of that trauma was Yitzchak able to fully realize and embody the life of one who could then love. So there is a very deep thing in that verse of kol dodi dofeck, pitchu li ra'ayati, see that next level of my beloved, my lover, is the level of Yitzchak, the hey, of binah, of the entrie left side which ends with the Cohen of Aharon, who is the great lover of people, that's all on the left side.
But it requires that for there be a reah, that there be ro'ah. That's one of the deep secrets that people don't really know how to look at and usually ignore. And that is that the word in the verse that teaches us to love one another V'ahavta l'racha c'mocha, this re'ah has the same root as ro'ah which means evil, and in Arameic is the word for desire. Ra'avah. For will and desire. But you can see how obvious the reason for that is. Because, as long as we're caught only in the sense of a submerged personhood that lives in the oneness as the life of love, so we cannot appreciate what it is to be V'ahavta l'racha c'mocha, which is to experience the source and the root of evil which is in the absence of one-ness and connection and in the space which is made that I should have the independent existence and ability to face G-d and say to Him, no, I'm not going to do your will. It's not for that power, just like if it's not for that power of woman and man with each other, then there is no place for love. They may be a beautiful ezer, but the ezer without the knegdo, which is the creative possibility for there being love, will not be there.
And one of the great and crucial realizations that we have in our relations with others just as G-d has lived that through us, is that the more we give space—and not just give space, which is ceratinly a part of it—but actually invest in the realization of the one with whom we live and love, even if that otherness seems to take them away, (sic.) so then the more possibility and depth of love there is. And this is exactly how G-d's first movement with man occurs. I will not put you in the Garden. It's all you, it's for you, it's up to you. I desire that it be for you, in the very best possible way. That's all I can give you, And I desire that you will be close to me. But I will not take you to the Garden. But I will tempt you. And I will seduce you, And I will show you my great desire for you. And only once that is established can I command you, telling you it's all for you. And only if you become the very greatest manifestation of you, of atah, will there will be the love that I've created this world for.
It's the great paradox of living. A living G-d embodying the very thing which He is. Because lo and behold, the verse right after that, so G-d says, It is not good that man be alone. Just like he said of Himself. It is not good that I be alone. That only in my creating of a chasm, of a roah, of an emptying did I arouse in myself this desire for other and the relationship of love with him, so too will be with him. And so, right after G-d says that, it says, Vayatzar elokin, G-d narrowed down. In the verse it means he created, but he narrowed down—it's the tzimtzum happening—he narrowed down and paraded in front of him all of the animals that he should have desire and longing for a partner. But because the root of love must be in one-ness, it can only come by someone who will be born of him.
(What's coming to mind for me, even the word temptation has so much baggage in our world, and I think of the snake and the next step, which I think is implicit in what you're saying, is the fall and the whole thingw ith the snake, so that was just built in for the sake of love?)
I'm always wary of giving too positive an interpretation to that story but there's no question that what we live and the consciousness that we live needs to see as what indeed was meant to be, because that is what we've been given to live. And yes, on a certain level, the irony of that story is that a complete separation from the consciousness of G-d as being all, could only come about by sin, by violation of G-d's will. Because as long as the act is one which is a continuation and a flowing out of G-d's will, so the establishment of man's otherness cannot be complete, and the ultimate expression of that in word, which actually means the same thing as rah in the aspect of it being emptiness is chet. Chet means missing, something that's missing is chet. So the creating of the chasm is an act of chet, it has to be, because if it was the acting out of what G-d had asked for, so it would not be the standing in otherness. It would have been something that He gave them. Your independence cannot be granted you. Your independence can only be established.
This is the great suffering of all parents of adolescents. And they have to know that. And there has to be room for that. It doesn't have to go to the extent that some adolescents go; it doesn't even have to be stepping out of the observance of the mitzvot. But no question that there has to be some establishment on the part of the child of his independent reality, which is going to involve excatly what the verse describes, al ken ya'aoz ishet aviv v'imo, therefore the child leaves his parents. And the parents experience that to a real extent as a chet. There is an aspect of parenting, which can tell you, having experienced two daughters getting married. There is a reason parents are crying at the chuppah, and it's not just joy. They're leaving. And that leaving leads to sort of a parental meltdown. That's the crying. The Maharal says that we're embodying our experience when we cry. We're embodying the experience of loss, and so we exhude something and drop it away with our tears. We embody that loss. So parents embody the loss of the child at the chuppah. When she's like, walking out on me. As much as they're going to keep a home like yours, and it's walking out, and they have to and that's why the verse must insist that al ken ya'aoz ishet aviv v'imo. It didn't have to be that way. Yes it does, if you want to get to reacha, then you have to leave achot. You have to leave the sibling parental nest in order to become a reah and step out and to live you life, al ken ya'aoz ishet aviv v'imo vdavak b'ishto, and draw unto his wife, which we're onto now. The reah, because of her separateness and otherness, Vhaya lo basar echad. Then they become one flesh. Only if they are willing to travel and traverse the experience of otherness, both from parent and from other. vdavak b'ishto menas there's an experience of otherness to which I'm joining and clinging to. And then, very profoundly, and in the context of the parshah that talks about Cohanim, the Torah tells us that there are people that a Cohen is allowed to become pure to and people that he is not allowed to become pure to. And the way the Torah tells about it is the following. It says, Tell Aharon the following. He is not allowed to come into the death of another, except for sh'eroh hakarov eilav, his closest flesh, his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, and his sister. So how do you read the verse? One way to read the verse is: Except for his closest flesh: his mother, his father, his son, his daughter, etc. The Rabbis say, You got it all wrong, man, you're still living in achlut. I'll tell you sh'erao hakarov is. I'll tell you who his nearest flesh is. It's his wife. Nearer than all of them. Because they have traversed the exterior of separateness to a deeper unity which has only been made available to them by virtue of re'ah. By virtue of gap.
This is why Yitzchak must be born of Avraham's and Sarahs' barrenness. They experienced ariri. They experienced being barren, also is the same word in opposite. They experienced the barreness and having a great longing and desire for trial. At least from her. But only then can they become sh'eroh hakarov elav, only then can they become the basar echad, the one flesh. Which is the nearest, which cannot be had with anyone else. Because there is no one else who is ezer and a knegdo. And so it is with us and G-d and sowe embody that very act of His and His own way of being in our loves.
So they needed to traverse eating from the Tree of Good and of Evil. And of rah. So there could be reacha. But the temptation of the snake took them to an extent that they didn't need to go to.
(Is it really the language of temptation with the snake?)
Although the Torah doesn't call it that, except later. She describes it later, hanachash ish yanik. Different word. He took me away. But what I want to say is that the temptation of the snake was an extent which was beyond what needed to be, into the world of nichush and imagination. Of which the offer was, you can go to the full extent of this. The full extent, that you don't need to relate to the reality that G-d's given you, and you can become creators of your own worlds, totally disconnected and totally distinct from Him. That's how Rashi describes it, You'll create your own worlds, which is become, like now, that we have such a work to bridge the chasm between truth and falsehood, between what we imagine and what is real, that getting back to the level which is the pre-sin level, that's not the chasm that we need to be bridging, the chasm between truth and falsehood, what we imagine and what is real, the chasm to be bridged is the breath in, the breath out, standing in the full personal realization of the embodiment of the will of the One who made us. By free choice and actualization and becoming likened to Him and becoming creators ourselves, but creators in joining Him and in oneness with Him. And not in adversity to Him. Being an ezer knegdo. So this became the fullest extention of ezer knegdo in eating from the Tree. That make sense?
(So that phrase about no breasts was applying to Avraham?)
Right.
(Amarta she Avram v'Avraham hayu hafachim?)
Lo hitkavanti she hem afachim. Chalila v'chas. Lo hayu hafachim. Avraham haya hitpatchut shel Avram. Avraham is the evolution of Avram. They are not opposites. This is what's so important. The evolved self and all of the midot, and all of the character traits that evolve, must evolve from Avram. Must evolve from the humble experience of the anavah that we talked about last time in the context of matzah. From there, everything then evolves. So that my giving is not a giving because I am in need of but rather it is a sharing of the ground of existence. My withdrawal and control is creating the possibiliyt for love and overcoming the chasm between us. By coming to full and profound self-realization. It's not like one is now supposed to be mushy about it. It's real intense and invested in. All of my desire for harmony is not because I am afraid of reality, but because I am rooted in the ground of being. All of my ability to overcome comes from there, and my ability to acquiesce, and my desire to connect. They all evolve from that. See, really there are no opposites. The Zohar says that the eye of atika is one eye. There is one eye in the bliss and pleasure in atik, of the consciousness of at one-ness, there is only one eye. There is no three-dimensional vision, and there is no right and left. There is only one eye. Because in the depth of all, there is no opposite. But nor is there manifest love.
(So is the halachah that he can also go to the death of his wife.)
Yes, halachah l'mayseh, Cohen is allowed to go to the burials of his wife. It's a mitzvah to [inaud] and that is because the Cohen's contact with death must always involve his unification of life. So if the Cohen goes to the death with an other within which he doesn't have a manifest expression of nearness, so then he's only in the gap. So he has a mitzvah to go to the burials and become impure by death to go to the burials of only those with whom he has a relationship of and achoti and ra'ayati.
(Do you think in the future you can continue something [inaud])
We must because there is yonati and tamati. (Laughter) And it's quite interesting because they reverse in the verse, and yonah—I want to confirm this—is David, and tamah is Yaakov. Taamati is the twin, which we saw with Yaakov, with G-d's twin in being able to be alone in the organismic connection. And the yonah is the one who is able to glance into the eyes of the other and remain fully at one in connectedness in looking in the eyes of the other. That's how the Zohar describes it, that the Yonah never tires of looking into the eyes of her mate. Which truly means that identification and identity come through the eyes. It's like you see, Who is this person, that's why we shy away from our eyes being looked into, now, it's inappropriate because it's too much exposure of self, in the looking into the eyes, but the yonah never tires of looking into the eyes of G-d and G-d looking into her eyes. That's David, the eyes that are always able to look and never ashamed of the personhood that is looking, because in the very depths of that personhood we are one. We are connected. That's why you have to be careful also about looking into eyes and creating context, spiritual context with people looking into each other's eyes, it can be very, very powerful and very connecting and can take things, if it's with the wrong people, into exactly the wrong direction. It's very exposed, very open and very real. And it's David's joyous life in his eyes when it says, eneich brechot b'cheshbon. In Shir Hashirim it says that your eyes have become like wellsprings and pools that are within the cheshcon, the accounting, which is to say that you're in the counting, you're in separateness of counting and of being numbered. But your eyes are like the pools—that was David, if you remember, the ma'ayan mitgabeir. Like, your eyes remain connected to the pools of existence and the joyousness of life that flows fromn there, and then that's the final level of yonati. But they reverse in the verse because of a secret that we're not yet to explore.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: Love becomes manifest in separation, but love is only possible in the rootedness of oneness.
Episode Transcript:
Last time we explored Avraham Avinu's midah of anavah and his ability to speak to G-d as one who is afar v'efer, one who is in the physical equivalent that's in your world, ground of being, in his being in identity with that, so his contact with reality is one in which he lives in a perfect and whole and seamless unity with that. And this is his sourcing in his own spiritual experience, in his own reality, sole/soul reality of the oneness of G-d. And we saw that Avraham's great midah that becomes the source of all of his other living is indeed love, love of G-d, but that is rooted as we've been seeing in this aspect of him that is in perfect oneness in G-d and in life that becomes reflected in the characteristic of anavah.
We saw how anavah is a stripping down of defining and the delineating aspects of our identity so that we can wholly and fully connect to other in a way in which certainly, there's nothing to talk about hierarchy, of one's standing above other, even standing outside of another. So the Rabbis tell us that this is the most divine of the midot, the most essentially divine of the traits, the characteristics which we're given to live, and that is an ability for us to connect with all in that fashion. And they taught us that the way of G-d that hta is b'chol makom she atah motsei gedulato she hakadosh baruch hu, every time you find G-d's greatness, exaltedness, you also find His expansivenes,, or His readiness to be in lowliness, whether it be in the sneh, or in Har Sinai, or in loving connection with a human being who is down and out. That was one aspect of things.
The other was a reality that G-d reveals to Moshe at the sneh when he teaches him the name of liberation. One thing that speaks to me very deeply in the way that G-d introduces Himself to Moshe with the name of liberation that will guide them out of Egypt, is the name ehyeh asher ehye, I will be what I will be. I think that on a very deep level, and so it is described in the Kabbalah that that is the primary name of humility. It's the name associated with G-d's aspect with so to speak his crown, his keter, which is what we've been speaking of, which is absolute simplicity, absolute unity before it becomes a separated out and distinguished into separate entities. I think we connect most deeply to that when we are able to say I am what I am. The statement I am what I name is a nameless statement which roots us in the simplicity of being. I am that I am, there's no particular names, and also it is powerfully liberating from the drive and neediness that comes with loss of that grounding where we are driven to make a name, an impression, or a reputation ir declaration, all are marvelous and significant asepcts of being alive, and I don't intend to belittle them as we follow down the path to David. But what is clear to all who have experienced something of this reality of anavah, this kind of oniyut, or spiritual impoverishment, which is only impoverished in this world's categories, but which is not at all impoverished, it's the greatest wealth in that rootedness; that when one has that, and is able to say I will be what I will be, or I am what I am, then everything else that comes out of that, comes out of that with a non-drivenness and acceptance, and histapkut, which we saw so much in Avraham. His acceptance of what is and his living what is and his sense of satisfaction with what is in a way that does not lead to complacency; but rather, roots him in the root of being who, as we saw last time in comparing to eastern consciousness, that that actually roots him in G-d's movement towards life, the next madregot in life that is the next movement down in realization and actualization, in living, which then becomes revealed in wisdom and in chesed.
Personally speaking, I know that when I need to return to G-d and return to a divine rootness that allows me to be with people in a way that is not self-involved or driven, so the ability to return to I am what I am and I will be what I will be, is really the name of G-d which is the name of liberation from Egypt and its gripping of names and insistence upon getting rid of the male in the mistaken thinking that in getting rid of the male and in getting rid of the naming, that one can also get rid of the desire to be free and on one's own. This is something of a retouching of where we had been last time.
I want to point out of how Avraham actually touches these also through certain behavior which are surprising. The Rambam describes that Avraham is the Great Questioner. Avraham, among our fathers, is the one who uses what science calls
paradigms, Ockham's razor, just cutting down to basics all the time, just keeping on asking questions: “and that, and that comes from , and that comes from, and where does that come from?” in those beautiful child-stories, and they really are childlike consciousnesses of “where does that come from, where does that come from?” Like the way kids can be so annoying the way they ask those questions. But they are right on, in the sense of re-touching on that aspect of anavah. So there is a very profound sense of Avraham as questioner, especially in the Rambam, at the beginning of Hilchot Avodah Zarah, which is why he so deeply rejects avodah zarah, which is about secondary realities, and never about primary reality.
The other aspect of Avraham, which the Rambam also describes, is living the truth because it is the truth, which the Rambam teaches is a great aspect of love. Living in love because it is so without ulterior motivations. Ulterior motivations come from the emergence of ego and selfhood and a separate entity, which are crucial as we've explored, but nevertheless, the rootedness must always be returned to it is, it's the parallel to asher ekyeh ekyeh, I am what I am. And the other aspect of this is an ability to live with the kind of equanimity which is called shiviti Hashem l'negdi tamid, and I think I mentioned that last time, which in the teachings of Rebbe Nachman, for instance, gives us a test (and it's also true in the Chabad teachings from the Mitler Rebbe). The primary test when you're contemplating G-d: If you have touched the truth of what your soul in its highest realms knows, the deepest test of it whether it has happened—one, when you emerge from that, you feel any kind of superiority over others (I have seen the light and you are nowhere); and the other is if someone insults you, and it arouses reactivity in you. You're allowed to defend yourself, but not to react in anger.
(Sorry, it's a sign of what?)
It's a sign that you have not really touched that simplicity of being which is the world of anavah. Someone gives it to you, and you feel your blood pressure rising, then you've lost that detachment. Both of those teachings are in Rebbe Nachman, and he has a long Torah about it. A very interesting one. And in the teachings of the Mitler Rebbe in his descriptions of meditative states where people go wrong in them.
I just wanted to point out those things that are dear to you, and now move to Avraham and move through a path that he himself follows to love.
The truth is, unless we explore where and how love appears, so there is a very important thing to know, and that is that the way in which love comes about can actually be seen in how Avraham Avinu's life unfolds, and especially in his relationship with his wife. And I want to give as an introduction to point out that what we are going to be looking at is something that the Torah is a great gift for us in being, and that is that the Torah does not describe the personality of its guides as complete, whole and perfect personhoods, and this is very important to know. People get snabbed in a lot of wrong thinking, because at every step of the way, they expect the avot to be perfect in the terminologies of our own way of living. And then you try to make excuses and explain it away. It's just the wrong approach because the avot are literally avot. And in lashon kodesh you have to know that av is not just a father or progeniture, but also an archetype and paradigm—that's the deeper meaning of it. And so these avot appear in full purity of what it is that they live. And so Avraham Avinu is anavha and chochmah and chesed, so then he appears in those, in the full purity of what they are with all of those so to speak, foibles of how that come out in real and actualized embodied living. Because the truth is, the real embodiment comes with Yaakov and especially, as we move down through Yosef and into David, and we saw also with Yehudah and with Leah. And especially when you get to David, then you can ask, Well how does this work in life? Avraham, too, but we need to first open yourselves up to what's going on.
And one of the things that is a present reality of what happens with Avraham, is the complaint of his wife of how he lives with her and how he is with her. What I'm talking about is a very challenging story at the end of Lech Lecha. Very simply put, Avraham Avinu is already a man with a child, Yishmael, and G-d now comes to him and says, You are going to have another child, and that child is going to be through Sarah. Now given all that they've been through, and all of their suffering in the barrenness that he, and especially she, have suffered in the barrenness that they have been in together, you would expect Avraham to say, How marvelous and wonderful! And yet, Avraham says the most odd thing. He says instead, Lui ishmael lo yichyeh lefanecha. Let it be that Ishmael should live before you. As if to say, that's fine, Yishmael, That's enough. And later, Sarah complains to him, saying, Chamasi alecha, I have a case to bring agasint you. I have a demand to demand of you, and that is, when G-d offered a child that would come from me, and even when you prayed, you were praying for a child, but you weren't praying for me, Chamasi alecha. The Rabbis explain her complaint this way later on, after Hagar becomes uppity towards her, so she says, You did this. Now he didn't do it. Hagar actually had child with Avraham because Sarah herself offered that he should have child with Hagar. But the implication of her complaint to Avraham is that she has become superior towards me because of something in you that does not maintain and recognize the special and unique relationship that you and I have.
And in fact, the Rabbis go even farther than Rashi. There is a verse in Hoshaia where G-d talks to the people of Israel and says, Al ki hashem hinhig beincha uven eshet n'urecha, G-d brings witnessing between us and the wife of your youth. You have betrayed her. She is your friend. Hi chavercha, v'eshet britecha. And the woman of your covenant. On this the Rabbis say that G-d appeared to Avraham and said, Don't you know? Sarah is your wife. She is the one meant for you from the time that you both were in the womb—she's your friend. She is the one with whom you have the convenant. She's not a shifcha, a concubine—she is your wife. Hagar, she is not your wife, she is your concubine. So G-d speaks to Avraham and says that there is something missing in your awareness of what it is that Sarah is, and it has become reflected in the way in which now Hagar's treating her, and rooted in how you related to the offer of a child that would be for her through you. (sic)
Now, we have to be with Avraham's living of reality in its purest, simplest, its pshitut, its nakedness of forms and entities. Anochi afar v’efer, so it's life, and life will be life, Yishmael is living. Why would there be someone coming now into the world who would displace him? It's the midat of histapkut of being present to what is, theis-ness of things, givenness of things, and it's a great and beautiful rootedness in chesed and in anavah. Life as it is and as we explain, life as it is is a very deep reality, experienced reality of what it means to be the man of chesed. And he's chesed in its greatest purity. He is life as it is. Histapkut.
So whether it's a downtrodden, or yuppy, a person of great status, or a person who is nothing, it doesn't matter. What more does it matter if that life comes through Sarah or through Hagar, it doesn't matter. It's life. It's life. Realizing this and knowing and being present to this, even though the stories are trying, but you have to appreciate that what the Torah is giving us is a consciousness, and how it looks from there. What is it when it is Avraham, who is that rootedness of being from which that emerges, who is the great pleasure and enjoyment of that at “oneness with all.” And it is a very great pleasure, and that is the word in our terminology. He lives in an anavah existence, in terms of the motive or feeling response, or arousal; it's an arousal of oneg, which is pleasure, is at oneness with. Oneg is related to Shabbat, and to a certain extent to statis, blissfulness. So he lives in his anavah root, he lives in that oneg and blissfulness of things—you know, when I say things as they are, I'm talking about a consciousness that sees separate entity and lives them, which is what then of course, appears—but the life that they live is there. That's what it is to be with him or to not be with him, depending upon your perspective and what it is that you're seeking. It's no coincidence, as we saw, that Avraham and Moshe, on a certain level have parallel on that in their nature of their connection with their wife. Moshe Rabbeinnu is also stripped of that separateness, not really living with Tzippora.
Yet, of course, Avraham is not the end of the road, but this rootedness is crucial for this love. And the reason that I tell you this is because in life, it's like that also. And the Rabbis tell us a most astounding thing. They tell us that when G-d first thought to create human beings, his first thought was that He should create them two—two separate people. When He actually made them, He made them as one. A wholey unified creature, androgynous or however it is, woman and man as one. And only after that he separated them one from another.
Interesting, His first thought is that there should be two. Now in rabbinic teaching, first thought is the purpose. First thought is where things need to get to. So they need to get to two. But for the twoness to be of rectitud, or rightly lived, they need to pass through being one. Now in the one, there is the world of oneg, just the pleasure of being one, the child-like playfulness, the one. But the point is that we should become two. This almost seems opposite of what we'd expect, we'd expect only that the couple should become one. But no, the point is the couple be two, but for that twoness to be lived rightly, they must first be, they must first have a rooted experience of one.
This is so deep and so crucial, because what it leads us to recognize is that the purpose as the Rabbis teach us, of life, is experienced in the twoness, but only in the twoness that is rooted in perfect and simple unity. Once there has been the experience of the perfect union and unity, distance from he who or she who I have been one with creates an energy which is called love. Love derives from distance. Love is rooted in the pleasure of oneness which, when it is broken, the two will desire one another and love one another that they should be unified. When they becomes unified, and in perfect communion and oneness, there is no longer love. It's union in pleasure. When it's completely lost consciousness and self-awareness, it is level of deveikut, which is no longer love, it's oneg. Now were it not for the experience of oneg, there be no revelation of love, because there would be no drawing of the two entities one to another. It's in the separation that love becomes manifest, but it's in the rootedness of oneness that love is possible.
So G-d's first thought for man is that there should be two, because the purpose of creation is love. Oneg and perfect simplicity, stripped of all realization and rooted in the ground of being, there was an eternity of that before there was a world. But that there should be love requires the realization of an other; the you, the other, who will be filled with desire and longing for the one from whence you came. That is why Torah and Bereshit begins with a bet, because it's in the two, not in the one, that its purpose is revealed. Avraham travels this path with us. It's the path of G-d Who created a space, so to speak, that there should be an other, and in that created death.
And I want you to know that the Torah is very careful to inform us in the very verse in which G-d says, For on the day that he eats from the tree, he will surely die. The very next verse in the Torah is, It's not good that man be alone. Let me make an ezer knegdo. Not be good that man be alone. Right after G-d introduces death comes the declaration, Not good that he be alone because it's death that produces the possibility for love. Because it is death which is the realization of separateness of entity, because it's the end of the ein sof, the end of the endless one, the end of the simplicity of just being as it is, it is no longer. That's how we live by our separateness, is in our mortality. Love is rooted in death. And we all know this at a ceratin level, that it's the most intense love story when the beautiful girl is going to die—then it all comes up.
I once saw a most marvelous an simple therapeutic process with a man who was dying with cancer, and he could not accept it, and the person who was working with him was taking him through the steps of realization that this death and mortality that he is now faced with overtly in the face, had given him love. He had not experienced love until he had experienced his own mortality, and his desire to be with his wife, and his desire to be in those relationships who he had ignored throughout his life. How he loved them so dearly and longed for them so dearly.
So for Avraham, the experience of love actually came about by virtue of the greatest teaching of his life, being called to kill his son. And I'll tell you the deepest thing. The first time the word love appears in the Torah is when Avraham is told to kill his son. G-d comes to him and says, Take your son, your only son, Yitzchak, who you love, and sacrifice him. It's also the first time in the Chumash that the word yachid appears, the unique one. The unique one. It's only in the background of his death does Avraham see his uniqueness and his separateness. Only in the background of death and the vacated space which is the chalal hapanui, which is rooted in the tzimtzum, does Avraham comes to know him as the one whom he loves. Up until this point, the Zohar says, Avraham is the man of chesed of existence as it is, and of a commitment to existence as it is. And the great lover of G-d whose entire orientation was in the rootedness of existence, and the pleasure in that rootedness and the vague sense of separateness from it, enough that he should experience longing for it and love of it. But love of other, Avraham himself had to experience the same, so to speak, process, that G-d Himself brought upon Himself of, so to speak, of death, of divinity, Who is the One of the infinite presence, and create his own endedness in the tzimtzum.
Avraham faces that when G-d tells him Yitzchak will be taken from you, and in a sense, experiences his own mortality with the mortality of his son. And experiences his own longing for this child and this other as an other, whom now he can see in the moment when G-d tells him that he is going to be taken from him. That's when love comes into the world. And it's tragic, for us, for Avraham. That when the word was delivered to Sarah that Avraham had taken Yitzchak to kill him, she died. And I wonder sometimes if the death of Sarah was out of shock of the news or of the knowing from whence love would be born. Or has it happened, when Avraham finished at the Akeidah, and G-d said, Oh, now I see you not only as the man of chesed, now I see you as the man of yirah, of reverence. That reverence, rooted in your ability to see another in their separateness, so now it's on this place, on this mountain, that forever my people will be called to be seen by Me and to see Me. This mountain where this happened will forever be called b'har hashem yira'eh, the place where G-d will be seen. Because only in that experience of that with an other have you now been able to truly experience that with Me. And so forever it will be that you should never come to this place empty-handed. It is from now one a place that will be called the place, or the mountain where G-d will be seen, and you will be seen. And it is the starting point of all of creation. That's why the Akeidah had to happen there and that consciousness would occur, which would now be the root of G-d's having made a world in its otherness, in its endedness, and in its mortality, where Avraham discovered that, is actually where G-d, so to speak, discovered that. The first point of Creation, which is a mountain upon which the Akeidah occurred. And forever will stand there, whether in actual physical or in spiritual form, the keruvim that stand on that spot, facing each other, separate from each other, drawn to each with the energy of love that draws the two separate ones that they should be reunified in reunion.
So when Avraham comes down off the mountain, he is informed that Sarah has died. And he goes to bury her. And up until now there hasn't been much emotion expressed between them except for the trials and difficulties that we saw and so now, he cries for her and he eulogizes her. And the eulogy that he sings for Sarah becomes the love song that every man sings his wife Shabbos night, the Eyshet Chayil that we're so fond of, is actually written according to the midrash by Avraham in the intense experience of his love and longing for Sarah and all of her wondrous greatness.
But lest you think, “’til death do us part,” it's appropriate to say, and on a certain level in the intensity of the couple first marrying, it's good to recall separateness. The non-Jews do it with that phrase; we do it with a ketubah. In all this oneness and beauty, we can't separate from each other. The ketubah is our expression of “'til death do us part,” of the mortality of this. But nevertheless, the Talmud tells a beautiful story of one of the Tanaim, who found his way into the machpelah, the cave where Avraham and Sarah are buried. And as the story has it, there is a guardian at the gate, Eliezer, Avraham's servant. You can't go in there, it's private in there. And he said, After death, there's things to be private about? And he gets a peek in and he sees Avraham lying on Sarah's bosom. So does death do us part? And is the end as tragic as it is in this world, is something that we can wonder, sounds like something happens after between this couple, too.
But this path that Avraham followed, which is a path of chesed in its purity, through its separateness and finitude of living in that which is not simple, and does have name and does have separateness to the realization of love and desire and longing. So all those are paths that pass from the perfect simplicity of anavah through chesed and into love. And in all the same love that G-d, so to speak, experiences for us, and that we in all our longing experience towards Him, which is the result of that mortality and vulnerability and lack that has opened up, is what we embody in our own love for another. It's G-d's love embodied in life that we experience as much as we are rooted in the consciousness of the pleasure of the unity and in the awareness of the embodied seaparateness; it's the travel, so to speak, between those two that are the travels that are the pathways of loving. It's the Rambam's teaching in the Hilchot Ahavah where he says, the third mitzvah that we have is the mitzvah to love G-d, and it comes, he says, when we contemplate Him in his greatness and wonderousness and come communing with him in great pleasure, and in that great pleasure, certainly one will come to love. That's how he teaches the path to love. First comes the pleasure of the unity with him, and the contemplation of the knowing and the deep knowing, and then certainly will come love. And you know why certainly will come love? Because certainly there will be a falling out of that consciousness and the longing for Him and the pleasure of that company. I might say one more thing. It's a great gift, the gift of longing and the Torah actually teaches us that when we will build a place where G-d will dwell, so G-d tells us the way to build it is to give everything that your heart desires. In the beginning of Parshat Terumah, it says, Everyone should give kol asher she yivenu libo. That which his heart desires, generously to give.
There is a place inside the mishkan, which is the place where the keruvim stand, which is a place that the Rabbis say doesn't occupy any space. That is to say, if you were to measure from one side of the room to the edge of the box that holds the tablets, and then to measure the other side of the room to the edge of the box that holds the tablets, it will be like you measured to the middle of the room. It's just not there. And yet it's there. It's a measurable entity, but it's not there. What is this that is there and is not there? It's G-d's revealed desire for us which is expressed in His Torah that we should have pathways to meet Him. And on it stands the two keruvim in energetic being drawn to each other (sic). What is that? I believe that's the place of the heart that is all it can and desires to give to G-d (sic). It's endless. It's endless because as long as we stand separate from Him, our desire for Him is the place of the infinite endless presence to Him. That's all we have that remains infinite and endless—our desire for Him. As soon as we meet him we are in communion. And when we stand apart from Him, then we are separate. But that endless desire, that forever remains infinite. And that finds its place in the only locus, in the house of the dwelling with Him which is endless and infinite place, when they will come to the mountain in Jerusalem, they come to place that box, that ark on the place where Avraham was with Yitzchak at the Akeidah, because it's there the endless longing is born. And the readiness to sacrifice for Him. And the desire to be to Him even at the cost of our egoic separateness. And then when that is sacrificed and given up, then we hear His voice saying, Al korchecha atah chai. Go back and be there, because My first thought was that we should be separate. My rooted purpose is that we should be separate and there should be an experience of love that could never have been had we been in forever and perfect communion.
(When Hashem tells Avraham that he's gonna have another son through Sarah and when Avraham replies that Ishmael is enough, it seems weird to me, because usually parents don't see having another child as competing with the other child, they just see it as a blessing. So to me it seems odd that his response is like that.)
(But it specifically would be competing. Because Yitzchak would be the first born of Sarah, but he wouldn't be the first born Avraham.)
Let there be more life, what's the problem of it? Why is it that in the acceptance of what is, there is this stasis? I think that there is something of a sense of competition. Yishmael would no longer be what Yishmael was as soon as Yitzchal would be born. That would be wrentched from him. In that state, it would not be conscious-able (sic)
That's one possibility. But the other, it's not like he's saying no to Yitzchak, it's just not driven that Yitzchak should be. You should know that there is the nascent opening there that begins to happen when Avraham's name is changed in that parshah, from Avram to Avraham, now he would become father to many nations, as opposed to the supernal Father who stands above. And I think that struggle is around that emerging personality, that Avraham would no longer be just be the simple Avram, but would become the more complex Avraham who stays rooted in the place of oneg, but also who produces many progeny of difference and of uniqueness.
So, in watching there the struggle and the emergence of that coming into an embodied reality which is separate, unique and different nations that come from him, from Avram to Avraham, remember we saw v'hibaram, on the day the world was made. The hey is small in the Chumash, it's through Avraham, who becomes the ever mah, if you remember. But the hey is small, it needs to emerge, it's not its original and initial personhood. We're watching the transition there. I don't know if that's a complete answer, but it's something.
(Ending with that Har Habayit picture, our experience today of Har Habayit is one of longing. We don't have it in our possession. And that connected up to the larger story of Avraham, Ishmael and Yitzchak and I'm wondering about the historical significance in the way it's played out.)
I don't have a comment on that but, gee, it's Yishmael up there, holding that place, and in holding it, creating this tremendous longing in us to repossess that which is ours. I don't have anything to develop with that.
(I felt comforted. It's good that we have this longing.)
It's not meant to stay the permanent state. But what I hear in you is a beautiful acceptance of and shlemut with the condition of separateness and of not having as a pathway towards this great love which is revealed through that and appears through that and because of that.
(That's the formula you're offering.)
In terms of living, knowing this and especially knowing it especially in times of human life with one another, with our mate, husband and wife, whomever, the times of separation and distance become the not only the impetus but the energy of increased love, just how it is between us and G-d. Something that I saw also, I experienced very much on Shabbat is how it works with children, too, that you can be in the pleasure of being at one with yourself, alone with yourself, just in the blissfulness of being. And then the child needs. So what happens then? So in the kabbalah is that for the hairs of arich to reach down to zaer, there must first be an awakening from atik. Now I'll say it in a language that [is more accessible]. Atik is the pleasure of full communion and simplicity of existence. Arich is the transition from that pleasure down towards connecting to that which stands outside me. But it's still in a consciousness of oneness, where it's all my child, myself, we're still one. Z'er anpin is the child that arich seeks to relate to, and he relates to that child through his hairs, which means he means to make thin and delicate is his coming down to the child, because he can't give himself over entirely, especially if it's a wisdom, the child will be obliterated (as a child, not that he would be killed, chas v'shalom), but that his consciousness will move into being arich's consciousness. He has to maintain the separateness and the specificity of the child as he is.
Reb Aharon HaLevi, one of the greatest teachers of Chabad and a student of the Alter Rebbe, says that when father seeks to connect to child, so he must first connect to the pleasure of oneness. And then, after connecting to the pleasure of oneness, that's atik, there comes an impetus to connect to the child who, physically, stands outside of you. Wait a minute, if you see him, he's standing over there. And he's a kid, with a lower consciousness, and he doesn't know the wisdom, and he doesn't know anything of what I have and want to give him. So in order for me to reach out to him and be willing to be dimunitive in how I reach out to him, to limit myself, and stop being in the pleasure of just being in my own, I first have to relate to the pleasure of our oneness. This is my child! And we are at one in our origin. And now from there I become energized to reach out in longing and desire to my child who stands embodied outside of me.
And then there will be two different aspects. One aspect will be the hair of the head and the other aspect will be the hair of the beard, in the kabbalistic language. So the hair on the head, which is soft and pleasant. So, I'll come down to the child on his level, and I'll play with him, or I'll give him breakfast on Shabbos morning, which is what happened to me, sitting in the pleasure of G-d's oneness and my Moshe Arieh wakes up and wants his cerael with milk, and I had just been learning this piece by Reb Aharon HaLevi, so you have to do it quickly, because otherwise they start getting edgy. So, to find just the pleasure of being with Moshe Arieh, to be in the pleasure of our oneness, he's my child. He's my son. And then to turn to him with softness as it says, Divrei chachamim b'nachat nishmah to turn to him with softness and come down to his level, hang out with him, talk to him, play with him, give him breakfast, it's great in that consciousness. It's a total place of love which is rooted in the pleasure of our togetherness. But which here is expressed in the calling out and the longing towards him that is in love.
And then there are the hairs of the beard which are harsh, where I will then [say], Would you like to learn something? I have something I want to teach you to raise your consciousness up towards me, that's a harsher beard, so to speak, it's a harsher hair, which is the bringing up of his totally being in the experience of separateness, that he should also taste something of the oneness and the connectedness by virtue of his consciousness becoming more expansive. (in the process that it will follow; he's only seven years old.)
(Does the child learn from the parent or is it the parent learning from the child?)
It's both, no, it's now the child learning from the parent.
(The power and reactivity to insult in the world, where it hits me, what I've been thinking lately is that sometimes the reactivity, not the external reactivity, the internal reactivity, the insult, is actually Hashem trying to give a place of hitlahavut, and not the shoresh of it needs to be fire, but the expression in the world is the place that, once you're holding that fire, it's like pulling the ego out of it, and extracting and then taking it and turning that raw energy into its real ezpression in the world. It's like, sometimes what I respond to, is okay, like the insult comes, so if you're holding like there's no reaction. But wait, we are in the world and there are things, and we do have to (?) not in the moment from ego but we should sometimes feel what comes up when something happens and then be able to look at it and dissect before we can work it out.)
Fantastic, and I really appreciate your calling to us things that we've insisted upon. And that is that you can't skip stages. There is an emotive response, and that comes with its shells, and it also has its inner realness. This person attacking me, belittling me, denigrating me, this is real separateness. Contest, the two entities as the fight. That hurts! Now that hurts is rooted, what you're giving over, is rooted in the truth of the pleasure of the oneness, which this is now the powerful denial of “in degredation of.” Then we root in that. Wait a minute—what is hurting me so much about it? What is hurting me is this isn't the truth of what is—this is a lie, but my emotions are signaling me, the painfulness of what that separateness is. Now, in my reaction, am I going to feed that separateness in fighting back? Or am I going to feed the attempt to bridge it? Not by capitulating and surrendering—in pniumiut, perhaps, to be modeh, to accept it. But b'chizoniut, to walk the process with this. This is taught in the Kabbalah, and Rebbe Nachman brings this, that the achorayim, the backside of ekyeh, is the numerical value of dam, blood; in other words, the backside of I will be what I will be, is the blood boiling when you get insulted. One of these picturesque languages. So what you're getting at is yes, but we can begin the process getting towards tikkun by feeling the blood boil and then look inside what the panim, what the front side, of that blood boiling is. The front side of that boiling is I am what I am and I will be what I will be. We're together in the humility of that.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: Avraham's anavah is reflected in chesed, the path of love is knowing the unity.
Episode Transcript:
We began to explore last time an aspect of Avraham that is revealed when he speaks to G-d the first time. When he speaks to G-d at the moment when he is told that Sodom and Amora are going to be destroyed and he says, Anochi afar v'efer. From there, the Rabbis teach us that Avraham Avinu's great midah, his root trait, is anavah. Of course, in the revealed aspect of Avraham, he lives a life as the midah of chesed, and he becomes the expression par excellence of love of G-d. What we are looking at is his origin of love of G-d in this expression of his, which is his words to Hakadosh Baruch Hu which reveal a pnimi aspect of him, which is anochi afar v'efer, which is he is an anav.
What I want to continue to explore is how that midah becomes reflected in the chesed of Avraham, and particularly in the way his path to love is one of knowing the unity as opposed to what we came to know of the path to love of David, which is a path to love by the joy of life. Because, for David, it was the effervescent and bubbling flow of the spring of life in its creativity and access to newness and to the excited realities that happen when that flow flows into the world. So his love of G-d came from that, as we saw in his love of G-d through his dancing. And he said about himself that he was a person of shiflut when he speaks to Michal. That aspect of love, which is David, I think is different than the aspect of love which is Avraham's. And that's what I want to talk about. In a sense, they are two paths that are different from each other. Because Avraham is the very beginning and David is the very end. Both of them are lovers of G-d at a different origin. We have seen so much along the way of how Yitzchak is the one who comes to love G-d by virtue of realizing the specific in the context of G-d's withdrawal and making space for. And Yaakov is the one who comes to love of G-d in the connection of him through the organismic unity of things in which all of the particulars and specifics are present, but there is a flow of life through them, as he loves his own life, loves that life which is the life of the world. The aspect of love which becomes reflected when G-d says, V'ahavta et Hashem Elokecha, when Moshe speaks and says, You shall love G-d, ki hu chayecha, for He is your life. That was the revelation of Yaakov. Then we followed through with Yisrael in the revelation of personhood and specific connection as the child of G-d and as the one who G-d has invested in, coming to his specific and particular revelation, and all of that then came to be revealed through David, in his ability to accept and live and create from whatever circumstance G-d sends his way. It's all a creative opportunity for expressing more life, more goodness, more presence of G-d, doesn't matter if it's negative or positive, whether it's suffering or it's a celebration. And to a very great extent, especially seeing in this day, which is the yartzeit of the death of Moshe Rabbeinu, so we are called to move to that midah which is becase of that declaration that Haman [imak sh’mo] made, which was since the goral fell out on Adar, for sure it's a good sign for him, because that's the month that Moshe died, but what he didn't know is that Jews raise a l'haim on a yartzeit, whatever G-d sends our way, besides getting into the soul's enlightenment on the day of the death, but just we take what G-d sends us in joyousness and that is the aspect of David, which comes at the end and which allows a new beginning that comes out of that end, the end, the malchut, is the beginning, the keter of the next world. And that's the way it is in all of life's experience. Whenever it seems like the end, and it's over, and it's suffering, and it's finished, actually become the birthing point for what is next, and what is the new realization and creative opportunity that G-d is sending us and that has to do with being attached to the maayan mitgaber, but when one passes through that gate and arrives at the place of simple and tamim, innocent acceptance and it's one thing to be actively involved in the creative movement, and it's another to be in simple acceptance. Because simple acceptance, as opposed to the act of creativity, moves one back into the reality of anavah, as we are going to see, and then the whole process begins again, because anavah is the word which is a characteristics that is representative of keter, the ability to be v'matel to be in abnegation before. And in that abnegation, to be in contact with all.
It's very crucial to recognize that we're used to anavah having to do with how a person behaves, and saying that everything I have comes from G-d. But the truth of anavah is that it has to do with the ability to strip away all of the accoutrements and the small definitions of what my reality is and to simply be real and present to what my reality is. And that's why anavah, a word which has another expression of it, and that is of the ani, of being impoverished. And the reason for that is, the aniyut, being impoverished, in this world, in the physical world, is a negative reality, got no money, clothes, food, down in the dumps, is shockingly the highest madrega because the highest madrega is to be stripped into complete pshitut of reality in its greatest simplicity. Before all forms are. That level of unity is a level that Avraham Avinu accessed, and therefore was able to say about himself anochi afar v'efer, and that must be the starting point. A person who doesn't have the acceptance of that must always be caught up in the egoic forms and specifics and constantly be battling for his survival when those forms and specifics become threatened or challenged. So if someone doesn't honor you the way like to be honored, or if someone doesn't call you by your right name or title, so you get all bristly, because you're trying to protect these forms which, if you dig deep down enough, you consider to be your life. If they don't call me Rabbi, then they won't repect me. And if they don't respect me, then they won’t listen to me, then (pretending to cry) I won't be able to be creative anymore. Then, if I were real about it, I would totally lose my composure and pretend, but if they wouldn’t listen to me, then I wouldn't be creative, and if I wouldn't be creative anymore, then what would I be living for? I'd be dead!
Those are voices of the egoic mind which have taken grasp in a way in which the only way we hold onto our sense of reality and presence is by holding onto these forms. That is the speaking of the nefesh behamit, which tells you—the animal soul, which tells you—you're a dead man if you lose all of those appellations, definitions, and names that you've been given. And as long as you are attached to that as that from which you live, then you can never be an anavah, one who truly embraces all of reality along with you on one equal level, whether it be a highly acclaimed Nobel Prize Laureate, or the lowest guy in the street who is a drunkard lying on the road. And only an anav is able to walk up to both of them with the same demeanor of, Here is existence, here is life that I am a part of, that I'm connected to. It's not something that I need to measure myself against, or establish myself as oppose to, or be concerned lest I become too much associated with, that I might lose the standing I have gained or achieved. That must be the starting point for any kind of a life now going to be able to live in unity with reality as it is and to get down to the point when David arrives. Without this as the starting point, so it's all a secondary kind of a battle, I accept it, I judge it, I take it or leave it, depending on whether it serves my false sense of what gives me life and reality.
I was talking to someone who is in a conflict with his in-laws. So he's telling me that the conflict is supposedly religious issues. The in-laws are not religious, he is religious, they don't like the fact that he is religious, and they keep trying to compromise on his principles about whether they can drive the grandchildren around on Shabbat, take them to the beach, can they eat by them, so it's constantly an ongoing thing. And he feels himself being chipped away, compromise after compromise, what should he do? So I'm listening to him, he wants a piece of advice. What should he do? How much should he compromise, how much shouuld he hold onto? What should he do? So I’m listening to him telling me, They get angry and cold to me, and I know that they're angry at me, and I can't stand that they're angry at me, and I can't live with this, the way they're acting towards me. They have to stop doing that. They have to drop being so negative towards me, and I can't stand it. As I'm listening to him, of course, what's of greatest interest to me is not, of course, the great piece of advice that I'm going to or not give him, but his experience of his reality. About his in-laws being angry at him, and being cold towards him. He can't stand that. He can't live with that. I want to tell you, that as soon as you hear someone say something like that, so that's the place to visit with them. That's the place to visit. Were I to give him any advice, compromise on this, be strong on that, stand up on that, it won't make any difference because those people are in his life in order to bring up his nefesh behemit which is telling him, I can't live when people are angry with me, I can't live when people aren't happy with me or when people don't approve of me. As long as that is sitting there, whetever he will give in on, provide them with, ora attempt to appease them about, is sure to fail because they're being in his life for now to bring him into a clarity of, what is his life? What is his truth? Only when he is liberated from his belief of "I can only live when they approve of me" will he be able to offer them something from a place of truth within himself that they will indeed be able to live. And they will, and I’m one hundred per cent sure that when he gets to that clarity, then that kind of nagging, nawing behavior will end on that part. Because it's his clarity that is required on his part, and it is a matter of anavah. It's a matter of his accessing the truth of his being as, first of all, that which they and no one can take away from him. And his most primal and primary commitment to existence in life is, that when he touches that, so that all of the approval or disapproval, all of the anger or not anger will not be experienced in a way that if you keep moving down the ladder of, and if this happens, then, and if this happens, then, and if this happens, then, etc. I'm a dead man. The only way to undo that is either to look at the falsehood of it, and that's crucial, to look at the falsehoods of all those things, no, of course, not. As soon as he steps out of his egoic mind. But that won't be enough until he also—it's not so much surrender as it is join reality, as it is in its primary level of simple being. First of all I am a soul, divine, at one with life, at one with all of life, with all that is, everything else is secondary. That's the place of anavah and all creative activity begins from there, and if it doesn't, then it becomes driven, false, egotistical. That's why it’s so important to me to begin to this midah and return to this midah. And it is this midah that Avraham Avinu holds as we saw from the Zohar, which is also called ever mah, the limb of what, the ability to stand in whatness. Coach mah, chochmah, the power of the what, which is pointed to the keter, which is pointed towards the crown, which stands at the juncture between nothingness and something. And is always cognizant of the transition into something from nothing in its most mysterious and wondrous aspect so it never becomes attached because it's always at the place between nothing and something.
So this being of Avraham, very beautifully is manifested in the holdiay which is the holiday of Avraham. What I mean is each of the holidays has an aspect that it is a teaching of. And a forefather that it is a manifestation of. Sukkot is easy. Yaakov is the only one who lived in a place called Sukkot. Yitzchak, who is the man of gevurah and of the relationship of differentiation is knegged Shavuot, when we take our oath, at the end of the weeks, to be forever betrothed to G-d, forever married to Him, standing outside of Him, as the one who is commanded by the commander. That is Shavuot, Yitzchak, and in fact, the shofar that is heard there is the shoar of the ram of akeidha. Pesach is Avraham, and in fact, he is the only who mentions what is the primary manifestation of Pesach, which is matzah. When the angels come, he tells Sarah, go knead and make matzot. The Rabbis say, do you know why that was? Because when the angels came, when he was going to speak Anochi afar v'efer, it was Pesach. Because Avraham is that holiday, and for a simple reason. It is the pure beginning. Just as it is the pure beginning of us as a people, it is the pure beginning of us as a people through Avraham. It's what he is, and in fact, even specifically in Pesach, the specific feature of Pesach, which is his, is the matzah. Maror is the bitteness and gevurah and judgements of the living of the separateness which is Yitzchak. The lamb, the seh tamim which has to be brought, the simple lamb is Yaakov, who is a she psurah, it says about him Yisrael, always that's one of the representations, as opposed to Esav, who is coming to wolf him down, and the matzah is Avraham. And it's so perfect and beautiful, because matzah is called lechem oni, the impoverished bread, which despite all of the different interpreations I'm sure you've heard, its most simple reading is that it's the most simple, undressed and most primal bread, lechem oni. Any additive you add to matzah, whether it be oil, eggs, sugar, which is not the most basic being of bread, flour and water. Flour and water is all it takes to hold it together. Anything you add to that, it's no longer matzah. And in fact, in rabbinic Hebrew, matzah is simply another word for any unadulterated purity as used in various contexts having to do with hide that is used for right sifrei Torah, that it be "matzah." That is, that it has to be unadulterated, and there's gematriot around that.
But the point is an unadulterated reality, and that is, indeed, the root of liberation. Liberation doesn't come when you add on the riches and wealth that you accumulate. You may be, so to speak, freer to do what you want to do in this world. To buy the things you want to buy, to go to the places you want to go to, to see the things you want to see. So it does acquire for you in this world of forms, the ability to acquire things. But obviously, and you all know, that the real liberty, the real freedom, cheirut, belongs to those who are identified with one thing and one thing only and that is life, being and the goodness of it in its utter simplicity. The amazing thing is that Pharoah, in seeking to destroy us, when he saw how much we were reproducing, attempted to destroy us by taking away from us the accoutrements of life, so to speak, by which I mean, he tried in taking away the men and killing the men, was seeking to kill off identity as it becomes revealed through names. At the beginning of the book of names is very painstakingly careful, after it lists the sons of Yaakov, to not list anyone's name. People are all anonymous. Even people who are mentioned, like Shifra and Puah, those aren't their names. They have other names. Those are actually words of what they would try to do. They would go, pu, pu, pu to the baby. And Shifra would be the one who would hold the baby and massage the baby into being a beautiful baby. But it was really Yocheved and Miriam, not their names. Even when the parents of Moshe get married, they do it anonymously. The man from the house of Levi goes and takes a daughter of Levi.
The point is, the whole beginning there is the stripping down of names, and it becomes a nameless reality. Men are in names. That's why a married woman generally takes on her husband's name. Whether we like it or not, that's the way it works. The Chumash, for sure, the names come down through the men. The familial, because the male aspect of things is a kind of identity that comes through the specific. And he thinks that what he is going to do is to enslave them by getting rid of the men But the pasuk says the most amazing thing, it says, Kaasher yaanu oto. Kain yirbe, vkein yifrotz (34:18) The more he made them ani, literally it means the more he made them suffer, but literally it means the more he made them ani, so the more they became fruitful and multiplied. The darn thing didn't work. And the reason is because what he was doing was unwittingly actually bringing forth in the Jewish people their primal beginning, which is the at one-ness with life and their commitment to it. That's all. So the more he made them ani, the more he was creating the lechem oni, which would be their root to redemption. The more he stripped away their specific identity, so the more he put them in contact with their ultimate and final humility. And as they rested in that, so there was no destroying them. He unwittingly liberated them by doing that which, in his thinking, would be that which would destroy them.
This is what the Rabbis mean when they say that the women, the Tzidkaniot, were the source of the redemption. Because they would go out to their husbands in the field, and their husbands who were completely despairing of life, because what's the good of bringing life if it's just going to be destroyed and not go anywhere? Well, just have some of this fish, well they just drop their eggs and it goes where it goes. Just be fruitful and multiply, the ones who were created with blessing, the first blessing, to be fruitful and multiply. Simple. Just life, being. And Moshe is born out of that. That's the reality that produces Moshe, about whom it says that he was good. And the Rabbis said, oh, we’ve been there. That's the first light that He saw, and it was good. Just be. That's Moshe. He would be the one who manifests the true anavah which is his primary trait. He is the anav mi kol adam, the lechem oni, which came from the very man who was m'aneh otam, who impoverished them, stripped them down to their more basic being. That's what we're eating when we're eating the matzah. That's why it's the bread of liberation. Because it's the bread of impoverishment, the bread of that most primal beginning. It's like eating the light.
There's a price you pay to stay there, and Moshe Rabbeinu pays a price. He gains the greatest access to what being is as it begins because it holds there so then he can see the forms that are created through G-d’s will as they are realized in the worlds and knows the patterns and the right living that will most reflect the true patterns of life because he stands from that perspective and comes down from there. As the Arizal teaches, he is the yesod chochmah, he is the conduit who brings the wisdom, in the deep sense of wisdom that we spoke of; he knows the what-ness, as he declares, anachnu mah, down into the world. But he also pays a price in that, in that he can't really hold a marriage. He doesn't stay married, because he stays devoid of those particaulr forms. It's a painful price. But it's the one when the Rambam says is paid when G-d tells Moshe when he comes down from the mountain, Tell the people to go back to their tents. And Moshe Rabbeinu says, in the midrash, the Rambam brings it down, And me? Do I go back to the tent? And G-d says, Lo, atah poh imadi. No, you stay standing here with Me. And at that point he is no longer able to return to the tent which is the particulars and specific forms withon which people live. Each one of us in our own tent of reality as it's defined and bounded.
But that great revelation, which he brought us, which comes from there and is brought down into the creation of Torah, came from the beginning of Pesach. And only from there can the Jewish people begin its travels. And only from there can we every year return to that reality which is the reality of perfect anavah of Avraham. Like we spoke last week, the pleasure of that place, it's hard to shake. The resting in that. And the task of moving beyond that and moving out into realization and specificity means, on a certain level, either giving up the oneg, which is the depiction of the feeling that's associated with that, passing that up or somehow knowing the path to carry that with into all the aspects of life that I'm living.
Simcha, at the other end of the spectrum, which is where David, not Avraham, is, is exhuberant joyousness, that's very much in life, that's David dancing up a storm, embodied completely in the bringing of the aron to the Beit Hamikdash, that G-d would be embodied, ki v'ychol, in this place in Jerusalem. But oneg is a very delicate bliss, a pleasure of just being in contact with the all. It's very dear and crucial, and produces as a root, all the other good midot, traits, that are lived from there. And so they almost begin from Avraham's anavah.
And then, what this allows for, what happens most beautifully by virtue of that pleasure with Him is a great loving of the one who is Himself that ground of being. And this is the truth of Avraham ohavi, Avraham my lover, Avraham who is in his primary consciousness and primary being at one with that. It's at a certain level, it's reflected in a midrash which is told about Moshe, which, the Talmud says about Moshe, who is in a certain aspect a counterpart of Avraham, and kabbalistically so, if you know the midot, so you know that on the right side, Avraham's side, is chochmah, and beneath it is chesed, and beneath it is netzach. And Moshe comes out of chochmah and is ultimately revealed in netzach. He belongs to that right side, the side of the greatest expansiveness, in the touching of it all, in the non-specificity of a particular identity. The great bliss of that. The great liberating bliss which is that.
So Moshe reflects this in a beautiful description which gives a picture of him. It's a story told by Rebbe Yehoshua Ben Levi, a master of Aggadah. B'sha'ah she yarad moshe m'lifnei hakadosh baruch hu. When Moshe went down from before G-d, so the Satan came and said before G-d, Ribbono shel Olam, where did the Torah go? Where's the Torah. So, G-d syas, well, I gave it to the earth. So he went to the earth and said, Where's Torah? So the earth of course said, Well, Only G-d knows. Elohim hevin darkah. So he went to the waters and the waters said, It is not with me. So he went to the depths. She said, It's not in me. As it says, Tehom amar lo bi hi. Ki yam amar eyn imadi. So he continues and he goes to avadom and mavet. He goes to desolation, nothingness and death. They say, listen carefully, Ozneinu shamanu shimah. We heard about it. As if he's getting closer. Chaza v'amar lifnei Hakadosh baruch hu, so he went back to G-d and he said, Ribbono shel Olam, I've sought everywhere in all the land and I did not find it. So G-d says, Go to ben amram. That's Moshe. Halach etzel Moshe. Amar lo: Torah she natan hakadosh baruch hu, the Torah that G-d gave you, where is it? Amar lo, B'chi ma ani, she natan li ha kadosh baruch hu ha torah. What am I that G-d should give me Torah? It's a beautiful double meaning. What am I that G-d should give me Torah. Of course, the Satan understood that as what am I that G-d should give me Torah? But it also is likely, I believe, that Rebbe Yehoshua may be saying, it's also a statement. What am I that G-d should give me Torah—as he declares about himself.
And this is why, by the way, avadon and mavat had heard about her. Yam hadn't, yabashah hadn't, tehom hadn't, but avadom? Avadom knows Torah, because the depth of Torah is expression of being as it is. And it is, at its root, the desolation of non-specificity. It's death. So death knows Torah, because it's prior to the forms in its origin. So she's heard about it. So then he goes to Moshe and he says, Mah ani, that Torah should be given to me. So Satan, who doesn't know about mah, who stands in the opposite end of the spectrum of the yetzer harah, that insists on particular forms as ultimate expression and ultimate being, doesn't really get what Moshe's saying, and so he goes back to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so amar lo hakadosh baruch hu, I mean, the story isn't told that he goes back to Hakadosh Baruch Hu; Hakadosh Baruch Hu immediately responds to this. Amar lo hakadosh baruch hu l'moshe: Moshe. Badai atah. Moshe, you're a prankster. Meaning, you're like a faker. Amar l'fanav, ribono shel olam, chamud u'gnuza yesh lecha. Please, You have the most darling hidden beauty that is with You, she atah mishtasheah bchol yom. That you play with, take pleasure in every day in a sha'ashua, in a child-like playing. Meaning that it's not purposefully-oriented, it's just the pleasure of it. Ani achzik tovah l'atzmi? I'm going to take the tov, that good, as if It's mine, as if it's by me? It's not by me, it's in pleasure, in the underlying primal being which is pleasure. How would I say that is something own and (sic) (52:57) by me when the Satan came to me it was exactly right but the beauty of it was that he was joking. He made like a game out of it. But that's exactly the consciousness, the game, the play. Amar lo hakadosh baruch hu l'moshe: hoilu ata ta latzmecha, Because you made yourself small, Tikareh et shimcha, It's going to be called by your name. And so all of the prohecies that were ever given that end in Malachi, chapter three, end in Zichru Torat Moshe avdi. Remember the Torah of Moshe my servant, it's called by his name. But it's only called by his name because he gave up his name. You can only be called by the name of one whose very name simply means that he was pulled out of the waters. He was pulled out of the simplest, and the most undefined and unformed realness which becomes manifest in this wrold in the waters. That's Moshe.
But Moshe is the same reality where the expressed and manifest reality which Avraham began as the ever mah. And so, when he's told by the Satan, I heard it's by you, he said, bchi mah ani she yiten li Torah. It's that particular aspect of Avraham which becomes revealed to him through his anavah, which is actually the root of his ability to be the one who would conduit (sic) this most primal impriture of what reality is into life as he does.
So Avraham's so-to-speak preparation for being able to say Anochi afar v'efer was in telling Sarah, Quick, make up some matzot. It's the time of matzot, it's the time of being in the simple being, and from there to derive the commitment to life, which is the life of Avraham and the love of all, which is what the love of G-d from that reality is. Because you can't love G-d without loving all. How would you love G-d without loving all, if your consciousness is not of a G-d who is other, but rather one within Whom you are and all is not only embedded, but is actually simply the formation into forms of. There would be no possible way that the distinction would happen such that you would then distinguish between lowly people and highly (sic) people, between people of status in stature and name, and those who were down in the dumps, and even though, of course, we're called upon coming into this world, being here and relating to and dealing with and living out all that life gives us in all of its different aspects—the will of G-d is such that we should live all of that. When we are able to continue drawing from that reality of mah, then all of the worlds that then unfold from there, become worlds rooted in pleasure, shaashua, rooted in the enjoyment of the playing with, that is G-d's pleasure in Torah, and then become the life that Avraham expresses which is a life of love of all and of life itself.
If I could share a beautiful juxtaposition of two mishnayot in the fourth chapter I mentioned last time. One is Rebbe Yaditas, ish Yavneh, who says, in Misha four, Meod meod havesh fal ruach. Be of a very lowly and humbly spirit, She tikra enosh rimah. And we described last time how the Rambam actually gave us a picture of a man who urinated on him. And the reason for that is not chas v'shalom because we Jews love denigration for the suffering that it brings. But because that denigration put him in contact with what it is to be stripped of all the appelations, to return to just being matzah. That's what the depth of anavah is. So meod meod havesh fal ruach. But this mishnah follows another one which is that one which says, Al tihi baz l'chol adam v'al timaflid lchol davar, Never despise any human being and never push away any object. She ein lecha adam she ein lo sha'ah. For there is no man who doesn't have his hour. V'ein davar she ein lo hamakom. And there is no thing which does not have its place. And in a sense this is an instruction for a path. And it's really true, and I'm going to say it in it's most simplest way. There is no human being who doesn’t have his moment, because there is nothing in this world whose manifest reality is not a manifestation of reality. So there is no one who will not have a moment in which he is fully realized. To push anyone away and to despise anyone is to despise that truth of his rootedness in being.
But there is something else which speaks very strongly to me and I know it to be true: There is no person who, if you don't give him an hour, will not become someone who you're not baz. Their real hour, not an hour in which he is arguing egoically. But to spend time with a person and to uncover their deepest aspirations, to give him a focus, and the time, in shiflut ruach, from yourself. There is no person who, in that hour, will not show you something of the beauty of the being that speaks through them. Of course, there are some bad people out there; some of them take more than an hour, or at least you need to know how, but in a loving an shafel way, in this shiflus and anavah, so then it will bring out the level of the beauty and perfection of being that rests in them too. And so these two mishnayot come together beautifully, because lest you think that Meod meod havesh fal ruach means ignore the forms, forget about them they don't matter, then let me tell you something: Never despise a person, because he has surely his moment, his special reflection and special revelation. Having one will not allow you to let go of the other. But as we've seen, that's farther down the line. But the starting point has to be in that kind of a unity, which is the consciousness of Avraham, then all of the particular forms which derive from that come with all of the beauty and glory which they deserve with the honor and the reverence which they arouse which are the midot that come after that, the reverence being Yitzchak, and the beauty being Yaakov, which is what makes things beautiful when you see how all of being becomes reflected and expressed through this particaulr part of the organismic whole. And then finally the glory of each human being which is in their reflection of their joyous expression and their creativity which is their gift that we're all invited to express and live and take, which is David through Yehudah and Leah.
You know, Avraham sent his gifts to the east. On a certain level, I understand why they took them. The Brahmans, the reflection of Avraham, it's the nirvanic consciousness of a pure being. But you know what Rashi says about them? He gave them names of impurity, shemot tum'ah. That's what it is for us, to be rooted there is the root of life. But to stay there is the nail of death. Avraham without Yitzcahk, without yirah, becomes the avadon and the mavet, I've heard about the Torah, but I've never lived its embodied life. It's in the experience of G-d’s turning to make space, that there should be other. It's in the contacting G-d's own, so to speak, al korch'cha atah chai. By force you shall live, that His will that there should be an other at the beginning of a real life of love of other is made possible. We'll stop here (and just stay here for a few hours, too!)
(If the brothers in the east, their connection is through Avraham without fear of Hashem. Why is fear of Hashem necessary, because they live well, all of those Eastern philophies, I used to be very interested in those; you do create life, you can get married, have children, you can have amazing moments of fulfillment, you can do service for others.)
I don't know a lot about Eastern religions or practices. I just have a sense from the little access to this that I have that the perception that there is a level of life which is a game, really a sha'ashuah, derives from holding that consciousness without that reverence and respect for the realness of the creative world. And this I believe is our primary difference. It's a big difference. Because our knowing of life is of willful creation that G-d wanted this here, that it's not some sort of unfolded derivative, but it's a willful creation. So though we know that on a level it's an illusion in the sense that the primal realness is the oneness of all being, nevertheless, that illusion is willed in love. That-is-so-marvelous. Because it means that everything that we live, see and know, is sent to us by the One Who in love chose to create a consciousness that would see all of this as separate, different and happening and becoming and making the space for you.
I once had a conversation with someone who is deep in Buddhism. Maybe I'm missing something, but we were taking a walk in a very beautiful place and I said, just tell me something—Why is all this beautiful? What is that for you? And what it is for me, it's tiferet, in the sense that after there’s the withdrawal, so after, there's a creative consciousness which finds beauty and connectedness, which is what beauty does, in the sense of the attractiveness and loveliness of all that is. So again, I don't know what lies they live. But I think I have a sense of something of the perspective. Though there is much speaking of compassion there, real compassion? Not from, of oh, nebuch, you're missing the point. But real compassion in the sense that this is something birthed, rachamim in our language, we spoke of this when we talked of Yaakov, that real compassion comes from exactly the kind of thing that Azai said. That everything has its place that is willed and desired by a loving Creator. Rooted in the simplicity of being. But it's here, meant to be here. This is something this time of year with Amalek, who is saying, well, all you're seeing is just a product of your mind. Here, let me just give you just a little bit of wine, and see if you'll still see things the way you're used to. (Sounding drunk) Here, we'll just get you into the right state, you wouldn't see anything at all. So what the heck do you think you're looking at? Do you think that's real? It's all mikreh, by-products of a lower consciousness. Mikreh, meaning it's chance, in the sense, it's just by-products of a lower consciousness that doesn't really see the truth. That's Amalek. He says to you, who have been spit out by the cloud. You see now? All the things you think about as being real are not.
(It's true but it’s also not true.)
It's true in that it's all simple being. It's not true in that G-d has chosen that it should be seen this way and lived this way as an act of love that should allow for love in a relationship. The important point is olam chesed yibanah, he created it out of love. That's the transition point which happens when Avraham then comes into that realization at the moment his son is going to be taken away from him at the akeidah. That he's told, You're going to lose your only son. Then he realizes the lovingness from G-d in having given him an only son, someone specific and particular, and that's real and it's meant to be real. That's his awakening from the loving of the specific. That's Yitzchak, who is the man of awe and reverence. Do you feel like I answered you?
(We were just talking about Moshe, at the cost of the seeing the true reflection of the pattern, of the what-ness. That he couldn't keep a marriage because he couldn't hold onto the form because he was paying the price of being a conduit. So my question is, Why is Moshe the one who gets mad? He gets upset. It seems that being the conduit, seeing the real form and pattern, and we know that being angry is something we shouldn't do, so why did he get mad?)
I don't think I could explain why he got mad, but he did. (Laughing). He was human. And it was a falling. And in that falling, so he
(What do we learn from that?)
I've been there and talked about that, last Purim we were very deep in that as Patience and Anger on Purim. I'll send you a link but I'm just not there right now.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: An exploration of Avraham's humility: "Anochi afar v'efer".
Episode Transcript:
Avraham Avinu and the teachings of the Rabbis is the image par excellence of what it means to be a lover of G-d. And as the Rambam describes him in the teachings that he gives of how one is to live, in his Sefer Hamitzvot, so in his third mitzvah, he says that this man is the teacher of how we are to be in the mitzvah of vahavta et hashem elokecha. How we are to be in the mitzvah of you shall love your G-d. He teaches there that Avraham Avin is the one whose very being is given over to the love of G-d and this is demonstrated in a way that the prophet describes Avraham ohavi, Avraham who is my lover. And he also describes a path coming to that love, and he also tells that a love that is a true love of G-d is come to by virtue of a person's contemplation of His greatness. And in contemplating His greatness, over time, and with proper stillness, so one accesses something which is the oneg which is the tachlit hataanugim, the Rambam says; one accesses a pleasure which is the pleasure which is the end of all pleasures. That's the language of the Rambam. And then when one arrives at the place of pleasure which is the end of all pleasures, so one certainly will be in love. And there was Avraham who was the first one who that happened for.
One aspect of what I want to explore with Avraham is something which the rabbis also tell us about his having, and that is his anavah. And to appreciate this, we need to appreciate something about a dual aspect of Avraham's nature. On the one hand, we find that Avraham is the very root of the creative force of our world; meaning, he is the source and origin of the unfolding of reality. And this is actually expressed in the verse: Eleh toldot hashamayim v'haaretz, vehi baram. These are the unfoldings of the heaven and the earth when they became created. Vehi baram. And on this the Rabbis say, vehi baram, those are the letters of Avraham, he who is, of course in the transpersonal sense, he is the origin of the creative unfolding. Something else that is hidden in Avraham's name is what the Zohar says in the Introduction to the Zohar: Avraham is otiot ever ma. Ever ma means the limb of what. What—ma. Although ma, even though it might appear inconsequential, is a word of opening. Like in the seder, we say Ma nishtanah, ma zeh, we all know ma. And when Moshe Rabbeinu expressed his deepest humility, so the way in which the rabbis say he expressed it, when people were arguing and complaining against him, he says: v'anachnu ma? We are what? So why are you complaining against us—we are what? V'anachnu ma.
And the word ma, which is what, this might be abstract… but the word ma is always the opening word, but it also is the word hidden within chochma, wisdom, which is cheich-ma, a palette for "what-ness". So a person who has a palette for what, has the opportunity for becoming a bearer of chochmah. And that has to do with the kind of openness that wisdom requires of us. Not the kind of a wisdom which is the thinking about things, but a kind of a wisdom that is the openness to receiving what is. What is. Without asking who it is, or attempting to describe it and delineate it and define it, just what. That what-ness of things is, if we've come to the point of seeing Adam as meod, it's also important to point out that Adam is also mah, because the numerical value of the word Adam is the word “what.” And the Rabbis describe him as being a “what.” At the beginning of Baba Kama in a very interesting passage which we're not going to review right now, but they actually say that the nature of man is “what.” So that also interestingly, the bracha we say in the morning, asher yatzar et ha'adam b'chochma, and we continue to say that throught the day even time we go to the bathroom, so we are actually blessing G-d for the wisdom he gave us--chochma—and the number of words in that bracha are forty-five, which is kneged mah, kneged Adam.
I say this because there is something primary about who we are and who we are meant to be in our ability to question with "what?" So there are various aspects and levels to it, but the one I want to explore with you, the one I want to point out is one which is very prevalent in Avraham, and that is his humility. Because “what” as I said, is the demonstration of humility, as I've said I am what? And I hope that during the course of this, we'll get a better sense of what it means to say: I am what? And where that comes from. Anachnu mah? And why it is such an important root in our relationship and love with G-d.
So there's two places where the Rabbis tell us about Avraham's humility. One is when he is standing before G-d and he's pleading for the city of Sodom, which is filled with evil people who are doing all these things that are not meant to be done.
Avraham begins his conversation with G-d by saying, Anochi afar v'efer. I am dust and I am ashes. And on this the Rabbis point out, See what tremendous anavah that he has, to say, Anochi afar v'efer, I am dust and I am ashes. And of course, the simple reading of those verses is that Avraham is introducing himself as dust and ashes as a way of creating a supplication to point out to G-d that I am not thinking of myself as being very much of anything. But please, nevertheless, let me speak to You on behalf of these people. But there's another level of dust and ashes which I believe is even more important to recognize in Avraham's saying I am dust and ashes, which has to do with his connectiveness. It has to do with his ability to connect to the what-ness of things. And in order to bring this into a more real, concrete depiction, I want to tell you something that the Rabbis teach us about what the highest level in spirituality that a person can access is. And that is the midah of anavah.
So there's a rather extraordinary set of statements which the Rabbis teach us about the nature of anavah, and they tell us that the following tale—well, first they tell us the following directive, and then they tell us a story. L'olam yilmad adam midat kono. A person should always be focused towards the characteristic of His Creator. She harei hakadosh baruch hu hiniach kol heharim hagvohim. G-d left behind all of the high mountains, vayishrash hinato al har sinai. And He brought down His Presence onto Mount Sinai. Why? Mount Sinai is a low mountain. So, given that, for some reason, the revelation had to be on a low mountain, and the one that G-d chose was one which was low. And the Talmud continues there to say that this derives from what G-d says about Himself. Ani et dakah ushfal ruah eshkon. He says, I dwell with those who are downtrodden and I dwell with those of humble spirit. So Rebbe Yochanan teaches the following about this. He says: You know, every time you find G-d's gedulah, every time you find G-d's greatness, sham atah motzei invat nuto. There you also find His humility, and you know what? It says in the Torah, it says it in the Prophets, in the Neviim and it says it in the Ketuvim, in the writings. It says, ki hashem elokeichem hu elokei elohim adonei adonim G-d is the god of all powers, the great Master of all Masters, the great, powerful and awesome One, Who will not take any bribes. And then right after it, it says, He always worries about the justice of the orphans, of the widows, he loves those who are strangers, those who are converted, and gives them bread, and gives them clothing. It does it again in the Neviim. It says, So speaks G-d Who is the All-Mighty One, Who is raised above, Who dwells forever in utter sanctity, Who is beyond and transcends all of reality. I live, He says, I live with those who are downtrodden and who have a humble spirit. To always bring life to the heart of those who are hurting. And then it says again in Tehillim: Shiru l'elokim, zamru lo, sing out to G-d and make a path for the One who travels in the high clouds and make great praising to Him, and it says right after that, For He is the Father of the orphans and He is the judge for the widows, He sits in His holy place.
So Rebbe Yochanan is giving a teaching about what it is to be a godly anav, to be divinely humble. So here is a contradictory interraction between these things. G-d is beyond, transcendent, very great, very awesome, and he dwells with the lowly. So now, a person who relates to things in terms of their physicality would be confused by such a thing. Usually, when a person is big and tall and beyond, so he can't be with those who are lowly. Not only can't he be with them psychologically, he can't be with them also spiritually. Like a person who is, say, all caught up with their titles, status, puffing themselves up with names they have acquired, and perhaps they worked hard to acquire these names. So the more names they acquire, so the more separated from the common folk. So if you think about it, there's a phenomenon that the higher you get up on the ladder, so the less people will be able to accept being just commonplace. You can't just like hang out with the common(er)s. I remember in various situations when I was teaching, or especially in raising money, people become very status-conscious regarding Whose parlor they are going to go to and who they are going to be wanting to sit with. Or who do you sit with at the lunch table. Or all these kinds of things become very crucial to those who are very aware of their bigness, of their standing up above. And people will very rarely say, How are you doing, brother? Just a nameless connection—How are you, my friend? You don't talk like that when you are up on the ladder. But as you go down, you get to the shuk, that's how the guys talk to each other. When there's a context when there's no real status demands, everyone is like down at the bottom of the heap. So down at the bottom of the heap, there is a great deal of fraternity, a sense of we're all like in a kinship together, where all the things that would separate between us and divide us by virtue of the status we've achieved or the names that we've got or the appelations that we own, all those things are, you don't have them, or if you have them, they drop away. So the more down there, so the less those things are of concern. And it doesn't make any difference. So if there's a guy down in the dumps, so you're with the guy down in the dumps.
Now the reason for this is, the more a person becomes stripped of the naming and the particular and specific identity which they own, so the more they are able to live in fraternity with others without seeking what it is that would establish them as separate, as greater, as more important. There's a deep spiritual root in that. And that is called being pashut. Now literally, in Hebrew, pashit means to be simple, and to be undressed. And the depiction of an anav is someone who is pashut. Now the one who is ultimately pashut, so to speak, who is ultimately without forms and specific manifestation which is his only identity is: G-d. In a sense, all we can say of His divinity is pashut b'tachlit hapshitut, that He is simple in the very ultimate simplicity. That he's undressed in the ultimate undressed, in a sense, that there is absolutely nothing that is a specific identity that can be applied to Him because He is simply the ground of being. And the name which is the highest name for G-d is yud-key-vav-key, which means that He simply is. It's not something that we're used to thinking about, because you can't think about it. Because as soon as you’re in thought, so already you're in a world of levushim, the clothing, because clothing that we wear, but clothing that we wear is our body itself. And clothing that we wear is also our emotions and our speech and our actions. And our minds, and what we think. Those are also clothing. What I mean by clothing, is the way in which we come to be manifest. So the way that I'm moving my hands, the clothing that I'm dressed in, so to speak, is the movement of my hand. Now that I'm speaking, so the clothing that I'm dressed in is the words that I'm speaking. And it's also so that even if I were silent and just thinking, the clothing that I, whatever that “I” is, that mysterious and unidentifiable I, that I would be the clothing of my thinking in my thoughts. Meaning that it's coming to manifestation in a way in which it's realized through that particular reflection, that particular becoming clothed. But if I were able to access the pashut, the pashut b'tachlit hapshitut of myself, so to speak, if there is such a thing, and to be able talk about myself, so then there wouldn’t be thought or speak, or action. There would simply be simplicity. And we're really referring to that when we talk of this name of G-d, yud-key-vav-kay, which has no time, no particular manifestation. I mean the word itself, is the closest word we have in Hebrew meaning "being."
What would it be like to be there in simple being? We can't—except by quieting everything—touch anything of that, except in terms of how we might look toward it, by asking the question, mah? And not expecting an answer. That state of openness is, in a sense, one significant access point to that. Now G-d, Rebbe Yochanan teaches, His greatness expresses itself in His being with the lowliest of people. And the reason is—and this is the explanation that the Maharal gives—is because He doesn't have any particular form. He is pashut. So when you are pashut, so you are able to hang out, so to speak, with the low guys in the shuk. And hey, what's going on, brother? G-d is the One Who is able to do that more than any other being, because every time you find His greatness, you find His lowliness; meaning, every time you find His transcendence, or his grandeur and greatness, which then becomes translated in this verse as transcendence, you're not finding something which takes Him away and out; but rather you're connecting to He Who is everywhere and is everything. This is called in the language of Chassidut, hashvaato. His equalness, in the sense that He is everywhere equally and at once. And it is the secret of the verse shiviti Hashem l'negdi tamid. That I, with equanimity, have yud-key-vav-key always. Meaning, when I am in connection with the shem havayah, then I will be in the state of equanimity which is not a numbness, it's a connectivity to all by sharing its primary and most basic being.
And that is what we mean when we talk about an anav. Anavah will be reflected in activities like, if you're praising me, I'll say, No, it's G-d that gave me this gift. And it's true. A person who is an anav will associate whatever gifts he has to being a gift of G-d. Or an anav, when he sees another person, will not feel more than, haughtier. So it might come to expression, being able to say about them, Wow, they have all these great things, that I'm looking at and seeing, and paying attention to, and I'm giving them their level, even though it looks like this guy's a real shlump, and there's not much to him. But look at the way he talks to people, etc. (sic) where we seek to find ways to recognize the good that the other person has. And then relate to that. And those two aspects of things. One where, I'm not taking as my personal possession the gifts that I’ve been given, but rather, knowing that they are completely and utterly G-d's doing, and the other, when I relate to another, I don’t relate to them in a fashion where I look down upon them, but rather, I seek where their greatness is. These two elements of anavah are rooted in the primary one. There is a third one, by the way, and that is, when a person insults you, and I'm going to use a terminology that the Rambam talks about, when a person pishes on you. He tells a story about a person who was working to develop his shiflut in anavah and was once lying in the bowels of a ship in the most filthy situation. And someone comes along and looks down and actually sees him and actually pishes on him. And this pious person looked up and saw that and he felt the greatest joy he'd ever expereinced, that this is not something that he held against the person who had pished on him.
So sometimes we look at those things and we kind of wonder at them. But I want to put that in also, and that is, as it's taught in another place by the Rabbis, that when someone is attacking and belittling and denigrating you, that you know how to be silent before that. And the way the Rabbis talk about that is that the entire planet stand on those who, when they're being fought against, know how to practice blimah. Toleh eretz al blimah. The practice of blimah, of restraint. But the depth of blimah is rooted in the mah. When you have to restrain yourself, then at a certain level, you're bli mah, you're without the what. But the higher level is to be in the mah.
So these are three reflections of how you would manifest anavah in relation to what you've been given, in relating to what others are, and recognizing their greatness, and in not reacting by insisting on holding your place when you're under attack. We'll come back to them and none of them is easy. For me, the important point is that we recognize that these are all expressions of something else, and that's rarely spoken of. I believe the Maharal is the greatest teacher of that. And that is that all of these are rooted in a divine experience, a divine connectivity of being just as it is. It's a root for everything else. What I mean by that is a person who is gifted by simply relating to whatever it is as it is and appreciating its "isness"—it just is—and that is good. Like when G-d first saw the Creation, and He saw that it was good. So the Maharal teaches on that, what He saw was that it is. Its goodness is in its being. When one can strip himself from all of the demands and expectations and insistences on reality and what it owes him and his insistence on his standing in it and simply touch the is-ness of being. So then he is in havayah.
And this is why G-d is, in His greatness, with everyone. Of course. And it is especially noticeable with the ones that nobody else wants to hang out with because it takes away from their status. It's the almanah, the ger, and the dakah, even the completely downtrodden one. Now this is described in another statement by the Rabbis where they say: bo uray shelo midat basar vadam bmidat Hakadosh baruch Hu. Take a look. It's not the way for people who live in flesh in blood the way it is with G-d., Midat basar vadam gavoah v'roeh gavoah. You know, if you're tall, you see tall, v'ein gavoah et hashafel. And the one who's tall and high doesn't see the one who's lowly. But with G-d, it's the opposite. The higher he is, the lower He looks. Ki ram Hashem vshafel yireh. That's because highness is expansiveness. The higher you are, the broader you see. We experience this to a certain extent. That's what we mean when we talk about high. The higher you are, the broader you see. The more you're in touch with. The lower you are, the more particular and specific you become. But when it’s highness, which is of a physical sort, so in addition to being higher and being able to see more, you actually lose contact with it, on two counts: physically, of course, and spiritually, in that you're becoming more and more of your own special thing. So you actually lose contact, even though can see more, so to speak, physically. But spiritually, the higher you are means that you are less and less particular and specific and more in touch with all.
Now imagine maintaining and being in that. So of course, what you would say of yourself, to give a mashal to it, that is anochi afar v'efer, I'm nothing but dust and ashes. But if you're coming to speak to G-d about preserving the lives of those who are evil, so the aspect of Him who you will want to arouse, by you yourself attuning to that and becoming an expression of that, is anochi afar v'efer. I'm but dust and ashes, What is there of me, after all, it's just a piece of being. And I'm the simplest and most base, in this consciousness, connection to that. Even connection to that isn't even appropraite terminology. From there, everything else is born. But it's the deepest kinship of all, because there's nothing with which you're not in kin. There's nothing which you stand apart from . And this is the great knowing of Avraham of the oneness of G-d, which is the same knowing of oneness which is his great love of Him in perfect and utter communion.
One of the beautiful things that the Rabbis teach us about Avraham is in a mishnah which describes him and invites us to become a student of him. But if you're going to become a student of Avraham, what I'm speaking of is very deeply in the root. But there are behaviors, which are the three behaviors of Avraham which set him apart from his most evil opposite. And that is where the Rabbis teach us in perek heh, chapter five, mishnah nineteen in Pirkei Avot. (42: 45) Kol [?not clear] she yesh shlosha devarim halalu hu talmid av shel avraham avinu That someone who has these three things he's from Avraham's studnets. What are the three things? Ayin tovah, a good eye, ruach nemucha, a lowly spirit, and nefesh shefelah, I'm not sure how to distinguish in English the difference between low, namuch, and low, shefel. It's his nefesh which is his physical energy.
So, what is the ayin tovah? The ability to always see good in the other. And to be clean of jealousy. A ruach nemucha, a lowly spirit, is to not be seeking one's own honor and the nefesh shefelah, is to not run after one's appetite to get more. And these three are reflections of Avraham in his anavah. Whereas, Bilam, his opposite, is always the opposite of these. He's always seeking out what's wrong, with the other; he's running after his honor all the time, and can't get enough of anything. And this is played out in the narrative about him. But the one leads to one who is a source of blessing, which is Avraham, and the other leads to a source of curse, which is Bilam. One leads to become the source of all unfolding, which is v'hi baram Avraham, and the other leads to become the source of all swallowing up, which is Bilam, which is literally his name—Baal-am, the swallower. One leads to a very profound and marvelous connection with all that is in a place of bliss and wonder, and the other leads to a very troubled personality that's always afraid of losing and not having enough. And so Bilam becomes the one who is ayin raah, ruach gvohah, and nefesh rechavah. He seeks out the evil with his eye, in order to undo what others have; he has a haughty spirit where he says to the people who have been sent to him, G-d has not let me come with people like you, implying that there were others that he was waiting to be sent; and a nefesh rechavah, couldn't get enough money. He says to the person who invites him, to curse the Jewish people, you know, if you would fill my house with gold and silver, I would be able to violate G-d's word, which is a pretty clear indication that that's what he's got his mind on, gold and silver, that's the nefesh gevohah. Now these three characteristics are derived from a being always in the levushim, being always in the clothing of existence, and never touching the experience of what it is to be at stillness in being. Without that starting point, so all the other work on character traits, it'll always remain very external, especially when it comes to anavah as the root of love. You can't—if all you're caught up in is your separateness and uniqueness and all the other things which are so important, which we'll see, and we have seen how important they are—but you will not be able to experience any of those rightly unless they're rooted in the reality of Avraham's consciousness of all is one in its ground of being. When all flows from there, so then the midot are right. And they flow from there—they don't stay there—and they become a flowing spring, which ends with David.
But the same meod, which is the Adam, which is the ultimate expression of the unique purpose that we're each are sent here with, must begin with the same gematria of mah of I am what? What are you? I am what. That's the most I can say of it. I am what, I am what. This is also Adam, and the ever mah of Avraham. And the Rabbis go on to say a most astounding thing: Those who have this the Talmidim of Avraham, the students of Avraham, they eat both of this world, and they inherit the world to come, as it says, lhanchil ohavah yesh b'otsroteyhem amaley (50:26).
I give inheritence, or a holding of yesh to those who love Me. Now, in modern Hebrew, when you want to say, Wow! Unbelievable—yesh! It's like yesh! It's in the context of "it's for real!" Like now, I don't even know what the colloquialisms in English are, it's like "awesome!" It's for real! So that's the best way that the prophet could say that. The ones who love Me? You know what they get? They get yesh! They get real! Get real! b'otsroteyhem amaley, and I fill their treasures, their treasuries, their containers, vessels. Yesh! Who gets yesh? Ohavai, the ones who love Me. What are you talking about? When we looked at the mishnah, we weren't talking about those who love Me, were we? Weren't we talking about Avraham, who's got an ayin tovah, who's got a ruach nemucha, a nefesh shefaylah, that's what we were talking about. Who mentioned love? But what's clear in this mishnah is that the root of Avraham's teaching, which is Avraham the lover, is in his anavah. It's in his true and profound openness to see the good in another. Because he's not in contest with them. And to experience the sufficiency of what he has. Because he has it all. In his is-ness. I don't need to be chasing after you providing me with something that will add to the reality of being. I don’t need that. I might choose to grow beyond this, of course, and I am centered to grow beyond that to become from the ever mah, to the hibaram, the one who is origin of unfolding and manifestation, yes. But not out of neediness, that you will provide me with the wealtht that I need so that I sense significance. Not at all. Of course, you will have a henefesh shefaylah, and you will have a ruach nemucha that is not seeking any honor for himself. What honor could you give me, that is more than the honor of just being?
It comes from a different place, but I have the sense that it's related, but I'm reminded of a story that my Rosh Yeshiva told, Rav Gustman, who was one of the few gedolim that survived the Holocaust, and he was really considered one of the greatest Talmidei Chachimi who came out of Europe from Vilna. Went through tremendous suffering in passing through the Holocaust. When he was eighteen, he was already on the Beis Din of Vilnah, which, if anyone knows anything of what was once in Europe, I mean that was a profound expression of conviction of greatness. So when the war came, he escaped from the Vilna ghetto, and he fought with the Partisans against the Nazis, and suffered all kinds of suffering, including losing his son right in front of him. But he told us once a story of when he lost any taste for honor. He was invited with the other important Rabbis to a meeting of the Agudat Yisrael in Vilna. That meant that the Chofetz Chaim was there, and Rav Ozer, Rav Shcup, and other great names that you know if you live in yeshivish circle, all sitting up there at the front table. And it's a room of hundreds of people, and he came late. So when he walked in, so the Chofetz Chaim saw him and stood up. And he was a yungeleit. I think he was twenty or something. Rav Chaim Moses stood up for him. Everyone at his table stood up for him. It was like he was so totally “not mine.” And he walked up to the front and he sat down. From then on, he told us, it didn’t matter anything about that. Now, when he told it, I think the way he experienced it on one level, I mean, once you've been honored on that level, what could possibly be left? But I know, knowing him, having known him for the years that I did, I think there was something far more pneimiut there. That he didn't have a language to express. And that is, when that happened, then it opened up, there's no difference. Not “no difference” in the sense that there are no hierarchies—there are. But on the base level, there's no difference. If they stood up for me, it can't be something that I would claim for myself. It's just by virtue of being. It's a sense I have with him and the way he told the story. I'm not sure that I can give it over because the story sounds so much the opposite in a sense. Maybe not, I hope not. It's a realization like that, or living that, which is the starting point of everything else. It's the shiviti hashem lnegdi tamid, it’s the havayah always being before me, which is the beginning of everything else. And the Rabbis, incredibly, without explaining themselves, tell you that that is the experience of real, and it's the gift to those who love Me, and who live at one with Me. The gift of those whose lives are not caught up in all of the external trappings, but start with first knowing G-d. All of this as being. And from there whatever that will become expressed, derives and spells out from that.
You're welcome to ask questions.
(You mentioned a topic of blimah. So this is a very confusing point for me. On the one hand, I see and appreciate the wholenss and transcendence of restraint. On the other hand it seem that as Jews we have a responsibility to battle evil. I'm not clear what that is. Not even in the sense of Amalek, but even in a fellow Jew who is very destructive, even wicked, probably not conscious of it. At one point, by restraining yourself, are you giving them leeway, to even hurt themselves and you and others? So how do you deal with that? What is that separation, that line, if there is one?)
It's a wonderful question and I apprreciate it. You are asking about blimah.
I respect someone who has the power of restraint when they're under attack. And I recognize the place of that and the value of that. But you're wondering how does that jive, especially to use Jews that are committed to justice and righteousness and seeing to it that that comes about in the world, and battling evil, and fighting against it. How does that work? How do those two things connect? The statement of toleh eretz al blimah is translated in other language as shomeah bizyono v'shitek. A person is able to hear their denigration and to be silent in the face of that. And there is a great deal to learn and teach about that. But that has to do with this being a reactive response of seeking to defend and protect myself from denigration. As opposed to a response which is built on the commitment to the beauty of creation and the realization of G-d in the world, and commitment to what G-d is committed to, which is righteousness and justice, and right living. See, one place that it can come from is I'm getting obliterated by this person. They're putting me down, they're saying bad things about me, etc. (sic) And when it comes from there, then it's an ego-based reaction, which is not what the world stands on. Because what the world stands on is simple being.
(But people have the power to obliterate)
Wait. But when it comes from the response which is, What you're doing is wrong, and this is something which needs to be responded to and stopped, because this is evil, and what you are doing is acutally undermining the goodness of existence by seeking to pull it apart and rip it up. So the response there, and this will be the telling point, the response there will not be from anger; it will be surprisingly, very strong and powerful, but it will have within the power, what Rashi says is the power of the person who has a ruach nemucha, the power of patience. Of savlanut, which is Hebrew it also means the hold it, sabal. See, what I’m fighting is the evil. And therefore I can have – and savlanut doesn't mean you wait with it, and are okay with it and just let it slide, but the patience is—and it's so appropriate to Rosh Chodesh Adar today, it's the patience of the Megillah and of Purim. Purim is the holiday of patience, and if you look in the Megillah, it's interesting that there are more references to getting angry than in any other book. Haman's getting angry, the king's getting angry, and then his anger subsides, and then this one and that one, and Bigtan and Teresh, the people who are working for the king, they are getting angry, and everyone's getting angry all the time. What are they all getting angry about? Because they're living in the short face, an insistence of ruling over things that they should be as I insist upon them being, and they're living in our context right now, entirely in the levushim. You're going to take it away from me. Because when you live in the externals of things only, so of course, the ultimate of external is that it's all by happenstance and by chance. There's no organization, no life force which is guiding or directing this. So then you try to step in and take control. Then all the anger starts coming from that. But the patience, which is really in the story, and the midrash describes it, you know how Mordechai was outside, wondering where this is going to go, that Esther's been taken into the kings' harem, and then becomes the queen. Months, and months, and months, the midrash describes, he waited outside. So that ultimately, Purim becomes the holiday that lasts forever. Because it's waiting and waiting. Now, waiting, and the ability to wait, is derived in this anavah.
(Waiting for what?)
Waiting for what will unfold to unfold. And so you wonder and I'm hearing in your wondering, and correctly, what are you telling me to do? Shouldn't I participate in it? So what your participation will be whatever it needs to be and whatever you choose it to be. But if its righteousness comes from it deriving from patience—and not patience in the sense of qué será será, whatever will be will be, but more along the lines of "I'll get to it." Mordechai speaks to Esther, and it's the only line he speaks in the whole megillah, Mordechai says to Esther, Listen, this is going to work out. But you and your place in it will be place, if you don't step up now. Now imagine stepping up now, with that ultimate sense of patience that comes from "It'll work out" but I choose now to be part of that working out. But I choose now to be a part of that working out and stepping up to that challenge. But that won't be in anger and that won't be in fear, but in love of the opportunity that's been given, to participate in the unfolding of reality. In the hibaram of eleh hatoldot ba shamayim v'aretz. This is a moment of birthing, right now, that I'm participating in. And that comes deeply, ultimately, from the sense of oneness of all being, which has—I've gone back to the beginning. We've seen how much of participation in reality we're called upon to have—but it is only going to really be in love, when it comes with the anavah and the savlanut which is the first and most significant feature of Avraham, the lover of G-d.
(I'm connecting the way you're defining patience, with emunah—big buzz word now--, but is that faith? To me, patience is to wait but you're not just saying, “wait.” You're saying, “Wait in the trust that ultimately Hashem has a hand and what will happen will happen.” So it's not just a straining; it's a straining with a mission in mind.)
Doing with restraint.
(Because there's not enough information?)
Because I'm always living knowing on one level I know it's not upon me—it's life coming through and that is because my beginning point is that it's all right here. And that it's good, I'm sufficient in what I have. And you can't take that away from me. Is that in its ground of being.
(The hostility comes from fear. And if that fear can be overcome, and that solidity is coming directly from Hashem, even though we might react in the same way as the other person, we're coming from a place that is powerful as opposed to a place that is fearful and therefore vulnerable to destruction.)
I agree. It is and it isn't. As an experience it's not complicated. The intellectuation around it is complicated.
(Even though it can be experienced very quickly as emotion, it can jump levels as a reaction from anyone is to perceive danger and react to danger in some protective way.)
And you should. You have a mitzvah to protect your life. But a relation with that will be very different if it's coming out of a loving experience of the divine gift of being which no one can take away from you. And nevertheless, you're commanded to protect your body. It's wise to protect your name.
(This can be information. If one person attacks another person who is focused on serving Hashem, so yes, the person is being attacked. But something else is being attacked, and it's okay to respond to the physical threat... Especially the Jewish people are supposed to be the target from the nations every time they have an issue with Hashem. So, even though it is about them, it's about something bigger than them, so reacting to the attack is about defending themselves, but not just from an ego level.)
Not at all from an ego level. Not at all.
(When you restrain, it doesn't need to be passive. It's an active act. You're in tune with the here and now, you're making not a connection of passivity of being defeated or something, but counteracting it with an active intention of, call it goodness. To stay in that goodness, but not reacting to the outside. Not reacting to what is around you. It's an activity. You can be very active in your restraint.)
What we're describing is like a re-rooting. That's what I experience.
(Choosing life instead of death.)
Choosing life, and that has a great deal to do, and that has something we saw way back, in a Rashi that says that the first thing that man is to do is makir b'tovatam shel g'shamim. To see the good and connect to it.
(I think that if harm is happening and you don't respond to it, then you're participating in that.)
I agree, and no one here is saying to be passive in the face of evil. But blimah is someone who in that face of the attack on him, he's silent to the attack on him, that's not what it's about. There's something here that needs responding to, and that's because there's a path of bringing correction to the world, and on that ground I'm going to respond to it. The Rambam says when you give someone reproof, the test of its truth is whether you say it b'nachat, with calm, or not. The calm that comes with the authority. It might mean that you need to act in a way that is vociferous. The calm is not a decibel level. It's a power that comes from being rooted in being.
(So in my life it's a big issue, I struggle with it and when I hear a teaching like this, it reminds me that I shouldn't feel that way, and when I do, I need to fight against it, and I'm sinning, and I appreciate the teaching and that's right. I shouldn't feel that way, and it's almost a balm. But instead of it being where I actively experience G-d, at those times when I'm feeling so nebuch, instead of expereince G-d, it's a “should.” For you, have you ever had an experience where you're hanging out in the lowly places and you say, this is G-d?)
This is a great question and I'm going to adjust the language to share how I experience where it comes from for me. It's a teaching that I began the morning with, in the contemplation of G-d's greatness, so one experiences a great pleasure in that. Which leads to love. I really do not know personally of a path that does not involve returning to that and it's a live experience. It's not just a matter of how I think about things. When it becomes a matter of how I think about things, then it becomes I should, I need to, it must. Becomes very vociferous. But when it's not from there, but I maintain a practice of connecting to G-d's greatness and connecting to the pleasure in that, and becoming saturated by that, that's very important. We Jews unfortunately don't hold that in enough regard to give it the time that it takes, but it is the base, is what I'm teaching this morning, how we connect to just the what-ness of what is before you begin the language of describing it. It's not not Jewish, it's Jewish. What's Jewish about it is where it goes, as opposed to other traditions where they go with other paths with that. But it's important to begin in there with that pleasure in G-d's presence. And to have that as a centered experience which allows one to act from that place. This is a very deep thing about why Shabbat is important to us about what it is; it's not only the end point of the week, it's the beginning point of the week. It's the beginning of all activity. In the very beginning when G-d blessed Shabbat, Rashi says what the blessing was: they got a double portion of mannah the day before. So the Zohar which speaks out this midrash which Rashi is quoting, how is that the blessing of Shabbat if it happens during the week? So the Zohar answers that the blessing of Shabbat is the root of all blessing. So is stasis the root of all blessing? Yes, when stasis is experienced as communing with G-d. So, for a person to hit themselves and say, I shouldn't be reacting that way, I am getting angry and I shouldn't be getting angry, will usually get more angry, exacerbate yourself, and disempower you from responding rightly, because it becomes an undermining of the power. Even a simple shift toward rootedness in G-d: Who is it now not wanting to get angry. Oh, that's me. As opposed to: Who is getting angry again? Me again. Wack! See? But then, to shift into like, even asking that question, Who is it now not wanting to get angry. Oh, that's me, that wonderful blessed person I am who doesn't want to be getting angry now. And why don't I want to be getting angry now? Becase I am rooted in righteousness. And what does it mean to be rooted in righteousness? It means that I am rooted in the being in G-d, who is a righteous G-d. Who else would I come to desire righteousness from? And to desire that I not react in anger and in impatience, if not that that is the gift that G-d has given me. And that is my deeper want than getting angry now. So clearly, I'm closer to my essence when I'm relating back to who I am as the one who doesn't want to be getting angry, as opposed to the one who does want to be getting angry. Because what do I want? I want to not get angry now? I want this person to stop doing this to me, and I'm going to act upon that, but I want to be doing it from a place of authority and strength. And where does that want come from? That want is coming from my better side. And what is that better side? That's my soul. And where does your soul have that from? It's rooted in Him. And where is He? He is the beginning point of being. And I can be in the calm of that and in the confidence of that strength and what grows from that. Saturating ourselves with that is the derech I know, it's the teachings of the Alter Rebbe. As we see, the Rambam places it as the third commandment, to saturate yourself with the love of G-d. Avraham is the beginning of that, it's really important in the way the Rambam describes it. That means that the beginning of all avodah is Avraham.
And I believe that the root of it is in the anavah. And this, the Rabbis actually teach, they say, What wisdom made a crown for her head, anavah has as its heel. What does that mean? If we look at a hierarchy, we have wisdom, and something that is a crown for wisdom, that is a crown for the end of anavah's shoe, so to speak, so anavah is all the way on the top. And what is that? The verse says, Reshit chochmah yirat Hashem, the beginning of wisdom is standing in awe of G-d, because my ability to receive reality is in it not being about me. So in standing in awe of him, I know that there is One Who is beyond me. And He's source, and because He's source, then I stand in awe of Him, not because I'm in fear of what He's going to do to me, but I’m in ultimate awe of Him, because I know that He is the source of my being. That is the heel at the end of the leg of anavha, so to speak, that standing in awe. Why? Because the anavah is the simple communing where there is just the equanimity of there are no levushim there. There are no manifestations. And that's the root. That's the higher state, so to speak. And that state, I believe, and based on the description in the Kabbalah, that state is a state of perfect pleasure. It's not a pleasure which is a self-conscious pleasure in which there is an awareness of pleasure. It's just an awareness of blissful being which comes when the levushim are stripped away. So it's called in the Kabbalah atik. And in Chassidut, coach hashva'ato. The equanimity of it, of simple being. And then when you step out of there, so you begin to look at that, so you begin to feel tremedous awe, so you become aware of yourself, you realize it's all from Him, so you completely depend upon—now you're in fear. But in the level of fear which is high fear. And then from there you move to wisdom, to what is this? Remaining still in openness, which is abnegation, but already beginning to relate to his wisdom. In the Kabbalah, Avraham is both chesed, and a higher feature, which is wisdom, but he's deriving from a place of anavah. It's an ongoing pragmatic. It's a technique. When you're getting angry, and you say, Oh, I can't believe that I'm doing this to myself again. And to ask yourself, Well, who is this that is not wanting to be doing this again? Then you say, oh, I'm okay. That to go back into the tov, and seeing the tov, if you continue to follow that will reroot you in your divine origin. That's on the level of technique. On the level of practice, it's very important to be resaturating ourselves all the time with the oneg that the Rambam describes that leads to love, and that has to do with yesh, the goodness of being. By its definition, being is goodness.
(Rebbe Nachman also says about chochmah, if you switch the letters—)
Yeah, coach mah.
(Sometimes when I'm able to do it, is to keep a notebook of anything that comes up that puts me in the place of oh, I just did that. Instead of spending the next two hours in my head with that energy and then responding to my kids in that energy space, I can put it down and put it inside, and at night before bed I take it out again and say, okay, what took me there? What was the thing or moment that pushed me there, so that maybe next time I can catch it before it triggers my system. And for me, I found it's much more effective, because it's coming from a place that's reaction in the moment, and taking it to the place of okay, so let me look at that, instead of wasting so much energy in, like, and take that energy into like, you're so rotten, just taking that energy, it's the same thing, into like turning this energy that could be this into that and use it for empowerment and say, okay I'm b'seder.)
(When negativity comes over me and I don't know what to do with it, I go and sit right in it. I put myself right in it. Because you're not giving it power, you're actually saying it from a good place of you, who you are, which is truth and connecting with G-d. You say, how bad really am I? And it dissipates the power of it completely, because you're not going to accpet it. You're not willing to say that this is what you are, because you're not, and it works because it's not who I am. It's not accepting it, as you said. I think.)
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: The time-bound specific self vs. simple beingness.
Episode Transcript:
(After singing a niggun) It's a niggun about things that we are learning. It's set to the pasuk that David Halmelech says, Yamin Haromema…asaseh yah, which means: the right hand of G-d is raised up. It's the higher power in relationship to the power of din and of justice and judgment, and the right hand is the hand which enables Hashem to do chayil--He has the power to create hosts, and create many wondrous and myriad expressions of life… David Hamelech declares about himself, I will not die, but I will live. I will tell the story of the doings of yud key--an abbreviation of one of the names of G-d-- and it has a very powerful connection to what I want to explore today, regarding David and his expression of the love of G-d that we began to see last time.
Here is the context: We saw in Rashi's divinely inspired perush on the pasuk v'ahavta hashem elokecha… that you love G-d with all of your heart, and all of your force or soul, and with all of your meod, that Rashi told us about meod, that the highest level of this love of G-d is expressed through mamoncha-- through your creative investment in life, your possessions-- and then Rashi told us that the other person who is present at the end of this process is King David, who we've been following the emergence of (since we saw the dudaim with Leah, which is in reference to his name) and now David actually turns out to be the one who is the final expression of love of G-d. His name "dod" actually means the loved, and the lover, and therefore Shlomo Hamelech, when he begins Shir Hashirim asher l'shlomo yishakeini m'neshikot pihu, he said, Kiss me with the kisses of His mouth, ki tovim dodecha miyayin, that your dodim are more dear to me than wine is. So he is referring here to his father, dodecha, davidecha, your David, who the kisses of Your mouth, G-d, are expressed through David, and they are more worthy and valuable to me than any of the wine of Your direct and expressed revelation. That there is something that happens between us, Shlomo haMelech says, that happens in a kiss, that can't happen if all there is is just wine. And this we understood with the help of Chazal; it was a reference to the incredible power that G-d has given by virtue of coming into unity with Him through the kisses of the mouth, which are teachings of the Torah she b'al peh and the halachah, and we saw how that becomes realized in this world with the halachah also being hakalah, the bridemaid who is where all of G-d's teaching and revelation arrive in that act , that one act of love towards him in fulfilling His will, which is our way of kissing Him. And the other aspect is the kiss of the Torah she b'al peh, the creative involvement in the revelation of His word, and a new element which I want to also refer to today, is something else about these neshikim.
But the transpersonality, the power in the world which is embodied in David, is a kind of power of love which comes to realization in the bechol meodecha. And what was the bchol meodecha? That David becomes the one who expresses at the meeting of all of the various and sometimes trying meetings with life, is the one who achieves the level of bchol midah u midah she moded lecha, that with every measuring out that G-d sends to you, that He measures out to you, haveh modeh lo, so acquiesce to Him. And I believe that's the correct translation here, as opposed to hodaya, with giving thanks. Here it's--in a sense--surrender, it's an acceptance of, it's a being whole with that, David says. And Rashi goes on and says that David is the one who says: kos yeshuot esah, uv'shem adonai ekrah, that I raise up the cup of salvation and I call out the name of G-d. Tzara v'yagon emtza. I find difficulty and travail, uvshem adonai ekrah, and I call out the name of G-d. Whether it's kos yeshuot, whether it's tzarah v'yagon, whether it's salvation, or it's travail, bshem hashem ekrah. And I want to point out that bshem hashem ekrah, doesn't seem to be an expression of thanks. Hes not thanking G-d. He's not saying, uvashem odeh, that I will give thanks to G-d. He says that in many other places-- it's not that David is short on giving hodaya. But here, in meodecha, what he is doing is being modeh. How? By calling out G-d's name. And this is a very powerful and crucial element in all of the work that we have been doing in the love of G-d. And especially in the aspect of the creative force which we explored last week in the lev tov, which is the heart of creativity, the pounding life-giving force, which a person, in his right purity, becomes that. That lev tov is rooted in that maayan mitgaber, in a spring that is overcoming all kinds of obstacles, whether it be fear, whether it be self-denigration, or--but that the maayan comes to be expressed in the lev tov, and in attaching oneself to that, so one learns to be modeh.
How is one modeh? So we saw last time, in telling a tale of someone who had a tremendously liberating breakthrough in a certain context that we were together, that breakthrough for instance may even be the kind of plug that is in the neck of the bottle, that's the plug of his own self-hatred, or self-denigration, or calling into question his ability to be an expression of all of those but block the expression of the maayan mitgaber which flows out. And the incredible thing is then when a person becomes modeh--meaning accepts--and here I'm giving the explanation of what the modeh is, he accepts the reality as it's being given to him. He accepts that and he is modeh to it. That's the first stage. He is at one with the is-ness of things, just as they are. Without all of the lies and blockages. Just as they are, that's the first stage. Just with the is-ness of things just as they are which attaches them to, as we've explained in the past, to the Tree of Life, as opposed to the Tree of Judgment of Good and Evil. And now that he is attached to that place, there is a marvelous thing: and that is, that there is a life-force which in a sense protects from becoming complacent when you're modeh, a life-force that pushes ahead to evolve further and grow creatively into more.
Now I want to look at u'vshem hashem ekrah, that he's calling out G-d's name. So we saw profoundly last time that this is actually a reflection of the love of G-d which the Maharal taught us; it was a reflection of it's ahavah she aina t'luyah b'davar, it's a love which doesn't depend on anything, meaning it's not a matter of whether G-d's doing good things to me or things that I don't like. Because I'm so at one with Him, and so connected to Him, and all of life is experienced as the wellspring of G-d bubbling up through reality, so that actually pushes us ahead in our growth in the participation of that. That, the Maharal taught us is love, because love is the deepest communing of our soul with G-d. And already at this point, the love that we are describing is really in a sense vaguely connected to the lover and the beloved as two separate entities. It's devotion to expression, it's connectivity of all, and it's a process of birthing, which is what life then becomes about.
So something very powerful which the Rabbis tell us and actually has a lot to do with the day which is coming out, Tu B'shvat, Rosh Hashanah la ilan, and the way in which we're always called upon to live our lives of creativity and action in this world. And that is, I would say, the most important contemplation that we have in our literature, which is the shliuv of shem yud kay vav key and alef dalet nun yud, that those two names be ever intertwined. And there is a way of writing them which is intertwined, which you've seen in certain siddurim, and it is encouraged, when a person is praying, to have either in imagination, or on the print in front, the shiluv of these two names. And the reason for that is because, the shem Adny, is the most dear
--and dangerous--place. It's most dear, because it's the place of our realization and creativity, because shem Adny is a reference to the soul as it becomes expressed in the world as an Adan. An aden in Hebrew is a socket. Like the sockets that were holding the tabernacle in its place. Life is Adny, life is My aden, G-d expresses through that name. Your life is My adan, Your life is holding all of this divine influx. That it should have a place to stand. That's shem Adny.
But shem Adny has a profound danger, and is most present specifically in our creative moments, which are so endeared and we've given so much space to in our teachings. That is because the experience of creativity can become a profoundly separating one. We saw this in the trial of Yaakov, who remains lvado, alone, for the small shards and the image of him being alone (and the first time of his being talked about being alone.) It's very painful--it's painful, in a sense, to be a creative person. The artist's life is a trying one, and I think anyone who has any kind of creative realization that is personal and dear to them knows that there is a very curious path that seems to be followed in that there is--maybe it's not that way for everyone--but my sense of it is that there is a period of sorrow or trial, which then leads to a realization that I'm not about these trials and sorrows; they are what I am experiencing, but there is a depth to my selfhood and my being that is beyond the depth of my sorrows and my trials. There is something that actually the pain brings about by virtue of being a tzarah, which is the word that means a narrow straight, and somehow that narrow straight--like water that flows through that narrow straight--becomes energized, where there must be a great word like impetuized--empowered--by passing through that straight.
And then there is this opening that happens; this is a pathway of creative output which is a trying one, a very difficult and lonely one. But in that loneliness, there is a tremendous meeting that we saw that Yaakov has with, so to speak, the lonely one. The lonely one being Hashem Himself, Who, no thing, no one, is like. And it's very important to maintain a consciousness of the shiluv between the place of the outer expression and personal and specific and unique creator, and the one who is simply a mouthpiece for the G-d who is speaking through me. And I don't say that lightly, but that is indeed what we call upon G-d to do. Every time we pray, we say Hashem sfatati tiftach, You G-d open up my mouth. So that is a shiluv of Havayah and Adny. How so? Because the name Havayah is the name of simple being, as we've seen from the Grah and other places. It has no time frame, no future, no past, there is only present in shem Havayah. That's the meaning of that name. And even present is a misnomer, because there really is no present that's just simply being. That's shem Havayah. And Adny is, as we said, a place where there is a specific casing for the appearance of being in the form which is time-bound, time involved, specific, and seems to be putting out its own stuff. This is why, the name Adny--alef dalet nun yud-- is the word ani, alef nun yud, with a dalet in it. And this isn't just a word game, this is very important, because in the Kabbalah, shem Adny is actually called ani. It's me. The I, the place of the I, I am, and the place of the I is the deep experience of being able to stand up to, being able to assert, be an act, or in life. That's the place of ani. But it only connects to Adny when the letter dalet is there. Literally, the letter dalet, as we saw, is so important in the name Yehudah, for instance, which is also a connecting of the dalet from Adny into the yud key vav key. G-d's name is the yud key vav key with the dalet from Adny, so that the ani can appear, which will be David Hamelech, who comes out of Yehudah, so that the ani of David Hamelech can appear. The dalet remains bound to yud key vav key, so that the consciousness of being connected to simple being, and G-d in His own changing presence will not be lost
But then David comes down as the ani, the I who is the creative output, and this then becomes revealed in the world, through the specific and creative activities which were so dear and about which we say ki tovim dodecha mi yayin, that your dodim are so dear, they are deeper than all of the wine, which is the place of the place right now. There are higher worlds than this, but [this is] the place of statis, the secret place. Yayin is gematria sod, which is the secret place of being, which is always a secret because we're always in the world of doing. So, it can't be spoken--it's an essential secret, in the sense of as soon as you begin to speak it, so then it is no longer being. It's already doing language, letters, forms, etc. so it’s a perfect secret.
For us, the David has to become a right reflection, with the dalet --and the dalet, David-- right? The dalet and the dalet has to have the clear and powerful-- powerful is the wrong word, but the very clear and zach, clean, transculent awareness of him being an expression of being, a mouthpiece for being. Very hard to hold that together. You could see why every time you say G-d's name you have to create a shiluv, a merging of these two names together. Very hard to hold that because as soon as you become creative, a new creativity, wow! you're excited and there's energy and there you are, and unbelievable, and even if it's not egotistical and self-centered, but the experience of it--it's me, it's happening to me and then you have to pull back and oscillate back to it's G-d, it's pure being, and go back there. When you're there it's a statis and there's all kinds of creative movement, so then you begin again and it becomes this oscillation which is indeed the oscillation of the shir which we spoke of once. It's the oscillation also between Havayah and Adny, which creates by virtue of its movement back and forth the song, which is the song that Shlomo Hamelech sings, the Shir Hashirim asher l'Shlomo.
But this very crucial holding is actually what we are referring to every time we say amen, every time we say a bracha. So in the bracha, he's brought it down from the highest shefa into this piece of fruit, or this piece of bread, or whatever it is, and then it has created this yichud, and then the person answering amen is actually saying something that is completely faithful and integrous. That's what amen means: Be faithful and integrous. And I'm connected by asserting that this is faithful and integrous. This world is indeed nothing but Him in His expression. And that is why the word amen itself is the numerical value of these two names of G-d, yud key vav key and Adny, because that is what needs to be established by the person who has heard the bracha, Amen. It's Adny and Havayah together. This is the real ne'emanut, the faithfulness that one's creativity is not experienced which is ajar from or [inaud—revert/overt?] from.
I must say a little bit of a digression, but it is important, too, because I would really like to see this more clearly, but I have a sense that eating fruits on Tu B'shvat isn't really--excuse me for bringing up my penchants. I am not so convinced that it's such a good idea to be so focused on the fruits on Tu B'shvat. Because it's about the tree, it's Rosh Hashanah ilan, and the word ilan is the same gematria of these two names. It's the same numerical value. Because the ilan is the place which is the connector between the ground and the fruit, or as the Maharchu of Reb Chaim Vital explains it, that there's a soul root which is in the higher worlds. And it's rooted and comes down through the tree and then it blossoms and becomes a fruit in this world. But lo! to the one who decides it's only the fruit. Has v'shalom. On Sukkot, which is the only holiday on which we deal with fruit, it's very important to keep connected to the lulav. Because the lulav connects it back up to the tree-ness of it and we're never supposed to be separated when they're being held. Because the most powerful and significant downfall is when the fruit is pulled away from the tree, and in fact has a great deal, --as we've explained in other contexts--, a great deal to do with eating only the product and not of the one who is its source and so we'll put that aside, but I will point out that historically, it's fairly late that we Jews are eating fruits on Tu B'shvat. It's mentioned in the Magen Avraham, 1600s, and there's good reason to believe that the source of having a seder Tu B'shvat with all these fruits is not a particular holy one. I'll put that aside…
In terms of our lives, it's very much that way. It's very easy to become fruit-oriented, because you're very much oriented around the productivity and the produce and the output and just in terms of personal terms, forget about what am I becoming and how am I connecting to Source. Who is producing this fruit? I mean, it's all a bunch of great words, but what is your life? Who are you? We live in a society which is so divorced from Source. Just give me the stuff! Go into the store and pull it off the shelf. I don't want to deal with mechanism. I don’t want to deal with process. I just want to have the stuff at the end. And our personalities become that way, where it becomes like our personality culture or persona-culture, which is what you're projecting, which is far more important than who you've become.
So you get these things, you know, like learning ways to get people to like you, or to make a certain impression without the transformation itself. So that's on the level of our humanity. But on the level of our divinity, it's the same way. In a creative mode it becomes disconnected from that first origin of expression. You know that one of the great and most important contemplations that we have is the knowing that all of this is always in becoming; it's always being made by G-d, He's always speaking this. You can even imagine in a mediation, the emergence of a thought; just watch the emergence of a thought which comes from perfect at-oneness with that which that thought is emerging. Where did that thought come from? What was the nature of it, that thought, a moment before you thought it? Certainly it was there in thought, in mind, somewhere, it didn't come from nowhere. Well, that is the very beginnings of contemplation of unity coming into manifestation in a very mysterious, wondrous way in which that thought is not in your mind before you think it, it's not there. You can't find it, identify it, but it is there.
Now that is a low level example of, if we imagine it as far more supernal that (33:24) all is present within G-d before it becomes manifest and real, or is it, or in what sense is it there before it becomes manifest and real? It is there and it's not, and there's this wonderous transition. I'm teaching you this because it's very important for us as Jews to always be attentive to that transition point, that we become creative and expressed, but we know it was a thought that was thunk by G-d. And that's what it is and that's what our lives are. It's His thinking it. Even though we experience it, and we have to experience it, the Adanim which is the hard socket that holds it, and if we don't experience ourselves with substance, so then we're not going to do anything.
But the ani must always be connected or expressed through the dalet, which is a delet, which I began to explain twenty minutes ago, the letter dalet in Hebrew is a delet, [a door], a passageway, and so in the ani has a passageway that it's adni, and then when it connects up to yud key vav key, and its dalet becomes interpenetrated into the yud key vav key, then it becomes Yehudah, who is able to both acquiesce to and surrender to and give thanks for--and only from there can David our King emerge. And only from there can a true, redemptive consciousness emerge. And only from there can come true song and speaking of Torah and prayer, almost ironically, and prayer. And this David says about himself: v'ani tefilah. My selfhood is prayer. And the reason why he says that--it's so important-- is because--well, (hesitating) the prayers we say, in the Kabbalah, the Arizal, the prayers that we say, are kisses. This is the profound terminology of our teachings which must be taken with a right orientation of zakut, of non-materiality, but in the prayers we pray, so the first three brahcot are the chibuk, the hug, and the request we make of G-d are the kisses, so the Arizal teaches. What, the kisses? That yeshakeni m'neshikot pihu. Because when we pray, so there's a mixing of our breath with His breath, and this in the Kabbalah is a very high place of unification. The prayers are actually His voice speaking through us, and that's the only way to truly pray, which is with an awareness that it's Havayah who's speaking through my Adny, my Ani.
And I'll say it in simpler terminology. It's His will and desire which I seek to align myself with in my prayers, and to speak His word, so that I will be speaking what it is which He Himself desires and it will never be anything else other than that. Just like it should never be anything other than His Torah that I speak when I say something which is a chiddush, something new. What does that mean something that is new? Is it not what G-d Himself thought? Of course it is! If it's new and disaligned from He, then it is nothing. And when it is very ancient, only then is it something, but in its being ancient, and the more ancient it is, the newer it is when it is received in this world, and in this body. It's this profound paradox that we live. We only want to say the most ancient thing, the ones that are the deepest thoughts of His will.
The Zohar teaches that when a person says a chiddush, the angels raise it up and bring it to G-d, because He asks that a chiddush come to Him so that He might kiss it, and He kisses every chiddush. That's yeshakeni m'neshikot pihu, we're asking Him to kiss us with the kisses of His mouth. Pihu, which is the peh of yud key vav, with us providing the final heh, which is the soul's return up to Him to be kissed by Him and rejoined with Him, and then His breath becomes at one with our breath-- through a teaching which is a true teaching. This is what we really long for, and this is where love becomes so deeply at one with Him that in the end, David Hamelech himself says, it doesn't matter what you send my way, I am in full at-oneness with it. The Rabbis say that at the end of time, and I say this with trepidation and had it not been printed in the Talmud, then I wouldn't, but as you'll hear, because as the verse says in Zacharia, in chapter fourteen, v'hayah adny hamelech al kol ha'aretx, v'yom hahu….ushmo echad, that it will be that G-d will be King over all the earth, and on that day G-d will be one and His name one.
So the Rabbis say….(40:49) what , today he is not one?… Amar… so Rebbe acha bar chaninah, his name is like the fraternerous one, his name is the binding one who is the son of the one who has chen…. The World to Come is not like this one. In this world, when something good happens, we say, baruch hatov v' hamativ, blessed is the One Who is good and Who does good, but when bad news comes, so we say baruch dayan haemet, blessed is the True Judge…. In the World to Come, the only thing will be hatov v'hamativ, there only will be good and the good one. Shmo echad, so that was He will be one, and His name one. What? His name now is not one? ,…. Rebbe Nachman bar Yitzchak, not like this world, but in the World to Come. In this world, My name is written yud key but is read aleph dalet. In this world, it is written yud key vav key but we don't say that, we don’t pronounce that, we only pronounce the aleph dalet nun yud. But in olam habah, kulo echad, but in the World to Come, He will be called yud hey and he will be written yud heh. We will call Him by His real name. Because in the World to Come the simple being of all will be so present and apparent, that the experience will not be of things will are antithetical to or in favor of. It will only be Him. That's what David is calling to, when it says ubhem hashem ekrah, I call out His name, Havayah. B'shem havayah ekrah. Calling upon that His name should become One.
But we should experience life that way and indeed he is the one who is raising that cup at the end of the feast, at the end of time, at the end of G-d's sustenance for creation to give Him this blessing, which is this odecha of the final and most intimate love with Him which it's no longer a calling out of His name, it's a being to being with. This love, which is one which is-- there's glimmerings available to us in this world, glimmerings of it whenever we accept life, when we accept what G-d gives us, when we know it as good what He has sent us and what we have faced in our lives.
And I want to tell you something that is a great secret. And so much so that the Gemara goes on and says, Ravah, who was one of the greatest teachers of the Talmud, wanted to give over this teaching in a very public place, in the pirchah. The pirchah is when there would be very large masses of people that would gather for the teachings of the Rabbis. So amar le ha husaba (44:47) so there was an old man there, who said to him, l'olam ktiv, it says, ze shmi l'olam. This is My name to be hidden. This is to be hidden. So he didn't. (That's what I meant when I said I would give it over, it wasn't printed.) But the truth is, it's a secret whether you've heard it or not. It forever remains a secret, because it stands as an antithesis to our primary experience of life, which is of the ani, and the transition all the time from the ani back into Adny, through Havayah and Yehudah back up into the ayin, is one which is an ongoing oscillation and flux, which is truly the song of life, and the great love song, which is the Shir Hashirim asher l'Shlomo.
(46:12) There was once a man who lived something of this. He was the great teacher of Rebbe Akiva, who is of all the tanaim, is the most primary origin of Torah sheba'al peh. In fact, so much so that when Moshe saw Rebbe Akiva, he said, "You have Rebbe Akiva. What are You giving the Torah through me for?" I could go on and on about Rebbe Akiva…His name is actually the ending letters of a verse which is big important verse about our lines: Or zarua l'tzaddik uv'yisreh lev simchah. If you take the ending letters of each word, it spells out Rebbe Akiva. Or--resh, zarua--ayin, l'tzaddik--kuf, uv'yishrey--yud, lev--vet, simchah--hey. And Rebbe Akiva is the expression of the Torah she b'al peh, who lives his life in oneness, as we know that's how he indeed ended his life.
He had a teacher, whose name was--we only know his first name--and apparently, both the place he came from, and the way he lived life. And the name of his teacher was Nachman Ish Gamzu, the consoled one who was of Gam Zu. What is Gamzu? This, too. Why was he called Nachman of Gamzu? (48:28) Because kol milte de hava salka le, On everything that would happen to him, he would say of it, gam zu l'tovah. This is also good. This is also for the good. Gamzu l'tovah. Fantastic.
So, there was actually something here that could be put to use, a guy like this. You could send him to all kinds of situations, and he would say, gamzu l'tovah. Nice, but will it always work out? I guess, he'll always see it as working out, so I guess it's okay. I guess it's kind of like a no-risk thing. So the Rabbis needed someone to go speak to the Caeser, who was going to or had made a bad declaration against the Jews. So they wanted to send him a package of a bribe, of extravagant and precious stones. So they said, who can we send this with? So they said, well, let's send it with Nachum Ish Ganzu-- d'iluma b'nisim, miracles are always happening with him. He's learned of miracles. Actually an interesting phrase, because it doesn't acutally mean always happening with him, it means he's learned of them. Already you have a sense that miracles that happen to him don't just happen to him, they're related to somethng about his consciousness about life and the world. He's learning. His learning is a miraculous learning. So, what do they do? They sent him a suitcase of precious stones. On his way to Rome, or wherever he was going, he had to sleep over somewhere. So he put it wherever he put it, he went to sleep, and in the nighttime, the owners of this little rest spot came in his room, took the suitcase, emptied all of the stones out of it, put them in their bag, and filled it with dirt.
Now there are two versions of this story. In the one version, in the morning he saw it, and said, gamzu l'tovah. Another version has this in parenthesis, that dar , I don't know. In any case, (51:12) kimatva hatam, when he arrived in Rome or wherever he was going, sharinu l'sifta, so he presented the suitcase to the Caesar, they opened it up, and they saw it was full of dirt. The King wanted to kill him and all the Jews. They're making fun of me, those Jews. Nachum Ish Gamzu said, gamzu l'tovah. Eliyahu appeared, he looked like he was one of the king's advisors, and he said, maybe this is the dirt of Avraham, their father. You know, when he took dirt, he would throw it and it would turn into arrows, knives and swords, there's even a verse in their prophets that their swords are turned into dust. And the archer's bow is turned into chaff, actually the direction in the prophet, of course. There was this one that they couldn't overcome --lo matmu lmichtma she (52:41)-- So they checked it out, and they threw this dirt at the capital city, or at the country, and they were able to capture the country! Whoa!
So they came back and they went into the King's treasury and they brought out all kinds of precious stones and they give them to Nachum Ish Gamzu, and they said, Here, take this back and give this to your people. They were thrilled. Okay, so on his way back, so he goes and he sleeps in this place. I don't know, good things seem to happen in this place, so he goes and sleeps there again. So they asked him, What happened with your mission? How did things work out? So he told them what happened. They said, Well, what did you bring? He said, What I took from here I brought to there.
Okay, as soon as he left, they pulled down their house, dug up all the dirt, put it into big boxes, and they brought it to the Caesar. And they said, this is it! This is the stuff! We are the owners, we're the ones he brought it from. So, they said, okay, let's check it out. Of course they checked it out and it didn't do anything. And so these scoundrals had an unhappy end. And that's was the story of Nachu, Ish Gamzu, teacher of Rabbi Avika. What's this Nachum Ish Gamzu? Gamzu l'tovah.
So the Maharal says a deep thing, "What did Nachum Ish Gamzu always say "gamzu l'tovah"? He was always saying "Gamzu l'tovah." As if it needs to be enunciated. It couldn't be, so to speak, just an attitude. So he says the following crucial teaching: It says that everything that comes from G-d is coming from His good, and when something comes upon a person which seems to be bad, listen carefully, (55:41) hu boteach bo… yitbarach. That he completely relies on G-d. Hashem Yitbarach…tovah. G-d turns it to good… by virtue of his reliance on Him. Vey interesting--listen carefully. Everything which comes from G-d is good. When it comes, trust Him. And if You trust Him, he turns it to good. Huh? Wait a minute. Is it good, or isn't it good? What are you telling me? Is it good, or isn't it good? Why are you telling me that my trust will determine whether it's good or not good? You just told me that everything that comes from G-d is good. Yeah. But its goodness depends on your reliance, bitachon, betach, is your ability to cling. In Hebrew, tiach is what clings to, rest in Him. Boteach bo. It's like sitting on the floor now. Let your weight be in it. Cling to Him, be davek in Him. And then He turns it to good. That's not to say that if I didn't, then it wouldn't be good? Well, you know what? Yeah. Because then you'd be living a lie, you'd be living the lie of your interpretive and judgmental mind which is pushing it off and not willing to be modeh to. But when you are boteach and modeh to, then the good comes.
Now I want to warn you. Don't try to make sense of this, because it's a tautology. It's not like I'm proving to you that what G-d is sending you is good, the proof being when you accept it, it's good. It's not a proof of anything. It's an experience of life. We could never prove such a thing, because we can't stand outside saying, it should be this way, or it should be that way, if you remember the young man from last week. You can't say it should be this way or it should be that way. You should be standing outside the whole system to determine such a thing, so shut up. Just shut up. Shtok. Ki kachah lah b'machshavah. You can't say what it should be, shouldn't be.
But what you can become is an experiencer of life as it is. And you can know, thanks to G-d having revealed Himself to us, that He made this world and held it because He saw that it was good. And when he saw the suffering and travail, the midrash says, that came about on yom sheni, on the second day, which is the introduction of duality. He didn't say tov about that. That if you look on the second day of Creation, He doesn't say tov, because it's the day when duality is created. But on the day of tov meod, He interincluded all the elements into one. And then even yisurim--which are the experiences of life which are antagonistic to what it is that we enjoy or like--becomes included, the midrash says, in the tov meod. And so it is that as long as we stay in the place of claiming omniscience, so forget it. What are you proving to me? That G-d is good because when I accepted what happened to me, that it turned out for the good? What, are you trying to trick me into believing in G-d? No, I'm not trying to trick anyone. I'm just trying to describe an experience and that's what the Maharal is doing for us; he describes the experience when you're boteach, he's m'hapech it l'tovah. But I'm telling you it's good. So if you're telling me it's good, it's good, even if I don't accept it--No, it doesn't work that way, sorry!
Here, give Me a kiss. Can you give Me a kiss, G-d says, can you become at one with Me? Ki tovim dodecha m'yayin, it's better than all of the joys which you could have thought to experience had you not come into being and stayed the simple wine in the place of the secret. If you can, then you've entered the moed . Meod? Like more than? More than. More than what? How could there be more than? You're right, there isn't. It's all Me. But know that meod is the same letters as Adam. Because you are the meod, if you live your life right. And the way to live your life right is when the meod becomes mah, which is the same numeric value, the question of what. The statement of we are what, which was Moshe, who said about himself, and Aharon, anachu mah. We are meod realized as mah. And that's when the ani becomes ayin , and the Talmud says that you should know the whole world stands on that, the mah of Moshe, as it says: toleh eretz al limah, that he hangs the whole of reality on li mah. On the ones who say the li mah, for me, it's what. And I'm complete bitul to Him, I'm complete abnegation to Him, it's only Him. (1:02:39)
The beautiful thing is, when that mah has the beginnings of ani added to it, the aleph, so it becomes meah, the one hundred brachot that a person is meant to say every day. But it's Moshe and the power of his humility which allows this to be, it's his power of humility which allows for the yichud for the connection of shem Adny and shem havayah as one, that the ani never lose its awareness of where it is always, and who is always thinking it and who is always speaking it, and who is always expressing it, and that is ultimate love and ultimate communion in a way that, in the end of time, will be expressed by the meodecha of acceptance.
(1:04:30) You're welcome to ask questions…
We discussed creativity in the beginning, and you talked about creativity in the sense of aloneness. How do you define creativity? Because you're not really defining it in a purely artistic sense, obviously.
I really appreciate your asking that. Because it's not always that way, and the truth is, when it's a true creation, there's always people together in it. Nevertheless, I don't know exactly how to explain what's lonely about it. In the end nobody can know your heart. They bring five things--I need to find this Gemara again--five things that no one can ever really know, and one of them is the heart of another person.
So that's creativity? The heart?
Creativity is-- the lev tov is the creative origin of the life-giving force which is creative power.
But creative power means what? That you're bringing something new to the world? It's something from you?
Life-giving. I mean, one one level, it's life-giving. When it's new life-giving, so it's even more joyuous?
So life-giving is a lonesome process?
No, that I don't think. The amazing thing is the way that G-d made it is that the only way to give life is with another person. Until technologically came along and tried to rake that up too. But the incredible thing is, the creation of a child, the creation of anything, really, always involves another person. If you remember, we saw (1:06:34) ashrei yulad'to, it says, happy is the one who gives birth to him, is the one who teaches be a chaver tov, know how to connect. So I'm contradicting myself, because I'm exploring different aspects of it. I'll try to say it as succinctly as possible. On the one hand, creation is always a co-opting activity, really, deeply. Creation is always cooperative. But there are moments in Creation that are experienced as just me doing it. Just me. And not only that: how could I possibly share this? Who would understand me? --on the one hand. On the other hand, of course it's with others and with all of reality and the whole world and G-d who is speaking it through me. And that is experienced very intimately. But I may be wrong, and I'm not the cleanest in the world. But I have the sense, at least this is where my madrega is, I have the sense that it shifts back and forth. And then you just want to share it, and then you realize: This isn't my doing, it's like everything and every person I've come into contact with and all life experience, this is reality. And then you're not alone at all.
So does the loneliness—is the loneliness not knowing if the-whatever the creative item is--is going to be received? Is that what the loneliness is?
Never able to fully share. One. And on the other, it's an expression of my utter and complete uniqueness.
Right. So that's not knowing if it will be received or not.
Not only the question of knowing if it will be received . It's unreceivable, because it's utterly unique. It didn't come from anyone else, it came from me. On the one hand. On the other hand, it's a very tameh place that I'm describing. Meaning, it's a very impure and incorrect. It's not right. The truth is, the whole of reality is participating in this and taking pleasure in it and contributing to it. And being part of it. That's the truth. Halevai that we hold that in the creative. But, nevertheless, it is still l'vado. Because this particular expression is so unique and different that it's really alone. I'm kind of like trying to draw for you the shiluv for you of shem yud key vav key, and Adny. You can hold it in a picture, with a yud and an aleph and a hey and a dalet and a vav, etc.
What I also want to say, it's the deepest love when it's experienced as something which is what I just described. We're all together in this. But who could you love more than someone who's participating in that with you?
Also you said that it doesn't really come from you. So if you're not really alone, then what you're doing is tapping into Hashem.
Right.
So then is it an illusion, then, the (inaud) (1:10:51) ?
Yeah, on a certain level, yeah. The class is over..and I'll continue to take questions.
I'm always very wary of the word "illusion".
False understanding.
It's called, like I like it better, in the non-judgemental that's called da'at tachton. It's lower consciousness. The reason why I prefer that is because lower consciousness is crucial. The Rabbis said, when they tried to get rid of the yetzer harah, they looked around the kingdom and they locked it up. For three days, the yetzer harah, and they looked around the kingdom and they didn't find one egg that had been laid by a hen. Not one egg. You know, no fruit. Sad to say, but you need a lower consciousness. Then you catch yourself, and then like-- I know, high souls, maybe, I don't know, but it doesn't oscillate that way. But it's good to always have someone who reminds you. I have a dear I guess former talmid and friend. He reminds me, It's good to have someone who reminds you, when you're in your LOW! G-d. Because you can really only sort of hold it pictorially with a shiluv of Havayah and Adni and to be in the ilan. Was that helpful?
It is, but I don't want to continue, because I could do it for two hours.
(Continuing) Amanut, omanut in Hebrew, craftmanship and artistry, has its root as amen; aman has its root as shiluv. Because real craftsmanship, which is the creative output, is always with this kind of consciousness. When you're purely in it, when the creative inflow happens, so then it's from G-d. Then you start working it out, thinking about it, presenting it, getting it into how it's going to look, packaging it, etc. But the real moment of omanut, is very much like that.
I'm just going to say one other thing. We're just referring back to our learning in the Rambam. (1:14:28) about Simcha bmitzvotav ahavat hakel shetzivah bahem. And David and his dancing and letting go, and it's all flowing through him, and Michal trying to stop that and etc. So the Rambam learned his teachings about simcha shel mitzvah from a sugiah that in a sense doesn't make any sense at all. Listen to this piece of Talmud. It says, Kohelet said two things. One thing he said was simchah--ech! It's a bunch of trash! As Ecclesiastes talks. And the other one says, Eshabeach ani et hasimchah. I praise nothing other than simchah. So the Rabbis say, What are you going to do with this contridiction? So they say, one is simchah, and the other is simchah shel mitzvah. And where do we learn simchah shel mitzvah, the joy of a mitzvah? So here's their proof. They say, well, you know, it says, that when Shaul was troubled and crazy, so his advisor said, We need to bring someone who can play you music. And, of course, they bring him no other than David Hamelech.(1:15:46) Vayehi knagen hamenagen, And then, when he played him the music, so his spirit was calmed. It's the same language which is used when the prophets would play and prophecy would begin. Huh? That's the proof that simchah she b'mitzvah, that's something. Now you look at that piece of the Talmud and you say, What? I mean if you had said, He brought him a lulav and he shook the lulav in joy, or if he had brought his tefillin and it said, He put on his tefillin in joy, then it would have been a mitzvah, right? Then it would have been the joy of doing a mitzvah, right? No. That's not simchah shel mitzvah. Simchah shel mitzvah is the joy in the joining. That's mamash, it's the only way to explain the Gemara. When he played the music, so he joined Him, G-d's spirit was resting upon him. That's simchah she b'mitzvah. The joy is in the joining. And Rashi says, well, it's a mitzvah to have G-d's spirit rest upon you, that's how Rashi, what they say in yeshivish, "tyches it up." But that's the point. That's simchah she b'mitzvah. The joy is in the joining. And that's music. The music is there. And that's David who plays the music for Shaul.
Can you tell me more about the day of tov meod?
It says that at the end of Creation on the sixth day, that G-d looked at everything, V'hiney, tov meod. Up until that day he looked at the particular creation of that day and He saw that it was good. He looked at the light, He saw that it was good. He looked at the plants, He saw that they were good. He looked at the orbs, He looked at the animals, etc. And then at the end, He looks at it all and says, it's tov meod, the allness of it that's malchut, the entirety of it. So the Rabbis said, You know what He saw when He said tov meod? He saw death. He saw suffering, pain, hell. Gehenom. And He said, tov meod. Gey shteis. Go understand that. That was the tov meod. I'm kind of loath to explain these kinds of things, but they have everything to do with what we've been talking about. Because that's the root for that pain and travail, as painful as that is, if you ask me, I don't know if I'd ever make the world like this, don't ask me, but that's the pathway that takes us to the meod. It's just that way, and when you're modeh to that, then it is that. Is that helpful for you? There's a number of midrashim on that, quite astounding.
(1:19:55) You're describing the oscillation. You see, it's very much like whiplash, like I'm hearing you say oscillation, and I'm thinking halivay, to be in some kind of like sweet oscillation..
Thank you, I'm being, I'm sweetening it.
And that in that, I guess, I'm not sure what the question is, I think maybe that sitting in the reality in the Adny of it, say, how to sit in that and feel it and accept it, without feeling the need to push it off and say, no,but I'm really bitul and I'm really gamzu l'tovah, even if there's a deep emunah in the gamzu l'tovah, in the moment, how do you experience it and feel it and love it?
How do you have both the gam, which reflects an awareness of my needing to see it, experience it, with all of its difficulty, how do you hold the gam, this too, is good.
Both the trial and the l'tovah. Right now, I think I've described as best I can in a different plane. If you try to step over that experience of trial and tribulation, than the zu l'tovah won't happen either. You can't walk out on it, it's a perversion. It's a disgusting perversion--is the word that comes to mind-- it's a disgusting perversion of life, to G-d's gift of life, to try to not be in that. If it's just your thoughts, drop them. I have this, I'll think all kinds of bad things, or regrets about, or judgments of, etc. You don't have to walk through those. You can just lay those aside, you don't have to think about those, because it's not more real than the reality you're investing it with now. So drop that. That's not G-d sending that to you. Put that aside, think of Him, think of something good, etc. But when it's in life, person got his leg chopped off, or a child hurt, or whatever, things that we share, just like, oh, it's okay, it's G-d and it's good, that's a bunch of crap--that's a bunch of crap, and I specifically call it that, because I have something in mind, but I have like someone shared with me a lecture that he heard from a professor of philosophy from Berkley. And among the garbage in the lecture there was a good scene he described. When he was in the 1960s in an ashram, a a Buddhist teacher was telling the people there: So what would it be for you to have this rose without the thorns? That's enlightment. And they went around the circle and everyone said, Yes! And they got to this professor, who said, "What are you talking about? That's not life!" Jewish guy. "Where would love be? Where would growth be? Where would trials be? What are you talking about?"
And it's not that we don't know this, and in the end the Gemara says, ubayom hahuh yiyeh Hashem echad u'shmo echad. That, by the way, is what we started with, with the niggun (1:24:17) Yemim Hashem romema…ma'aseh ya. I am telling the story of yed keh Because in the end, yud key will be G-d's name: yihyah. Yud key yud key, which is just the mochin, just the higher consciousenss, not the lower consciousnes, that will be in the end of time, but that's not now. But when you try to pretend that it's now, then sort of like jump the gun, then it's a short circuit. That's what the Rabbis say to people who try to go the long path through a short cut. Like in the famous mashal that the Tanya brings, that there's a longer shorter path and a short longer path. When you try to take the long path as if it's a shorter path, then you don't end up at the palace, you're just pretending. This has everything to do with what you were saying before about illusion. G-d created it, see that's where we're different from the Buddhists. G-d made this, that we should see things this way. What are you going to do with that? So if you live in a will-less reality, so then all you're going to focus on is, this is all illusion, maya, higher consciousness. But if you live in a reality which is willed by a loving G-d Who is good, and Who has made this in His goodness, well, then, don't skip it over, it's the meod and the tov. Love me. If you experience G-d as a loving G-d, so He made this not as some perverse and false image, illusion, but He made it as a reality that's meant to be lived. And then when you pass through it, and you do pass through it, what comes out at the other end, is the chelah yeterah, that the Zohar says, is the chelah yeterah of tshuvah and other things that what life is here on this planet for, you passed through the narrow path of mitzraim. You had to go there, the metzar hagaron, the narrow path, between your heart and your mind. Was that helpful, was I relating to you, Debbie?
Yeah.
Chaya, what's…?
Still breathing.
Okay.
Gam zu l'tovah does that mean, this is wonderful?
Pleasant and good are two different things.
Yeah, Gam zu l'tovah. I don't know that it always means, to enjoy, it's to have a consciousness and awareness that it's not happening without reason, that there's a higher course
It's going for the good.
and you're a part of that, and that's way it's good. But it doesn't mean that--
It's is l'tovah "l" tovah.
Yeah, it's for the good, it doesn't mean that it's good for you
Correct. Gam zu l'tovah. I think Rebbe Akiva has a higher consciousness, and more geuladic consciousness, and ultimately there's even more, but he's the beginning --Nachum ish Gamzu, of this kind of consciousness, that's expressed in Rebbe Akiva in the great love of G-d that he lives. But you're right, and there's another story, which is a counterpart story of Nachum Ish Gamzu, if you remember where he meets a poor person, and the poor person asks him to --are you familiar with this story?
There's a story about Nachum ish Gamzu, I don't know if I really want to tell the story, it's painful but it's important to see the other side, the Rabbis came to him once, he was ill, he was lying on the bed, he had no arms, no legs, and he was blind, the house was falling down. So they came to visit him, and the legs of the bed were sitting in pools of water so that the ants wouldn't climb up on the bed and gnaw at him. So he said to the Rabbis, First take all of the stuff out of the house, and then take me out, so they took all the stuff out and they took him out, and of course, as soon as they took him out, the house fell down. Because it was only in his merit that the house was still standing. So they said to him, How did this happen to you? So he said, Once I was walking on the way, and I had a load on my donkey, and a poor man came up to me and said, Could you give me some food, and he said, I will give it to you as soon as I unload. It's like the equivalent of I guess, like you're taking a hitchhiker. You'd like to stop here and the other one would like to stop ahead, I'll stop over there, and you'll get out and walk back. Something like that, I guess, so he said, I'll unload, and then I'll give you. In the meantime, the poor man died. So then, Nachum Ish Gamzu said: these hands that did not move quickly for him should no longer be, these legs that didn't run or him should no longer be. These eyes that didn't see his suffering and compassion should no longer see. Wait a minute, why didn't he say Gamzu l'tovah? Well, apparently, it's not so simple. I don't have an answer, just leave that as paradox. But it's not so simple.
Is that in the Gemara?
That story appears right before the one I told. Because then the Gemara says, so why did they call him Nachum Ish Gamzu? Well, because he always said Gamzu l'tovah. What? And there he is, with the earth of Avraham, the man of love of G-d. It was his love of G-d, the earth of Avraham. It's not simple to be Jewish, you don't have the thorns, you want to go on a different path. Yeah, we have thorns and roses together. Because it's not an illusion, and your choices matter, and your response before them. And they have consequences. That's the next series. About fear of G-d.
Oh yeah?
No! Have a good day, bye!
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript:
This is the day before a yarzeit and a day that has importance to me personally because it involves the whole continuation of the teachings of the Admor Hazakeyn in the world throught the movement which became Chabad, the last Rebbe of the path the was established by him, Menachem mendel Schneerson became a Rebbe on yud shvat and so we're in that moment now. Tomorrow is yud shvat.
One of the teachings we've been with is a path that we saw began in Moshe Rabbeinu's command to us V’ahavta et Hashem elokecha b’chal lvavcha b'chol nefshecha, u'bchol m’odecha. And we've been following that as it's become expressed through Avraham, through Yitzchak and Yaakov. And especially seeing Yaakov coming to his realization through Leah, and from there we saw how birth of Leah, and especially of her realization of Hodaya, came David. The amazing thing is, that the Chachamim teach us that V’ahavta et Hashem elokecha b’chal lvavcha, b'chol nefshecha, u'bchol m’odecha is parallel to these three, actually four great teachers, and the sifri, which is a midrash in the Chachamim. B'chol l'vavcha is Avraham Avinu, whose attachment to G-d was with all of his heart, all of his begin was given over to Him in his being drawn to Him with all of his heart; B'chol nafsecha, who is the o ne whose very life was given up to G-d, who is Yitzchak, ready to be sacrified and was to a certain extent, completely sacrificed to G-d, burned on the altar, his ashes remaining there, and b'chol m'eodecha, was Yaakov. So the Chachamim teach. And the Maharal explains that he was b'chol me'odecha, because his great teaching to us was in being modeh, and b'chol me'odecha is what happens, in giving G-d thanks, as the Torah teaches us about him, b'chol medoecha, have mode lo k'Yaakov, sheamar katonti m' kol hachasadim. He said, I have become so small by virtue of all the good things that you've done for me. Meaning, I've realized how much all that I am is this one point in Your great universe, which is a unique point, and there is no other one like it, but is completely and utterly given over to you, in gratitude to You and in acknowledgement of all You have done for me.
But we saw that b'chol me'odecha has another very profound significance when it comes to Yaakov, and that is b'chol mamoncha. With all of your money, all of your creativity, all of your uniqueness, becomes a focal point of love. And what I want to share with you today is something of a continuation of where we had been last week with Daivd Hamelech. If you take a look at Rashi on that pasuk, parshat V'etchanan, it's a very brief passage but it's an unbelievable passage, to convince you that it's right there. (9:46) Rashi says on b'chol me'odecha, he says, this is two different people: one is bchol mamoncha, the one who loves G-d even more than his money and the other one is he is willing to give over all of his money over to G-d, the one who loves his money more than his body, but then he gives another perush, davar acher, he says, b'chol me'odecha, what is that? B'chol midah umidha she moded lecha. Whatever G-d sends your way. Whatever He measures out to do, ben b'midat hatov, ben b'midat haporanut. Whether He sends you something you like, or that He sends you something which you experience as a punishment or some kind of trial; whether it's this or that, love Him, love Him. And who do we learn that from? None other than David Hamelech. Rashi goes on and says, b'chen David, hu omer, kos yeshuot esah, uv'shem adonai ekrah, tzarah v'yagon emtzah, uv'shem adonai ekrah, I raise up the cup of salvation, and I call out to the name of G-d, I have been in trials and sufferings, and I call out to G-d, and in the name of G-d I call. So then David Hamelech becomes the ultimate expression in Rashi's teaching here, of love of G-d, and he is the one, no matter what G-d sends, he experiences it as G-d's love and calls his name. Calls his name that he attaches himself to shem Havaya, in His most perfect name, the explicit name, the shem ham'furash of yud key vav key.
So that David Hamelech is b'chol me'odecha, who comes out of Yaakov and indeed they share this ultimate expression of love of G-d which is in that.
So what I want to give over today is something of what I believe that looks like in terms of the experience of life and what life is and from there, B"H to take this into our practice, because it is so crucial and basic in terms of what it means to live our lives in full and realized relationship with G-d. because everything else, anything else will not be love, I mean it may be love in terms of what the Rabbis call ahavah t'luyah badavar. A love which relies on something. It needs the constant feeding of my experience of you overtly being good to me and kind to me, but there is another kind of love which is aynat t'luyah badavar, a love which doesn't depend on any overt expression of caring or doing good for me for whch I'm grateful, and that is accessible, if one is able to live the b'chol me'odecha of b'chol midah u'midah she moded lecha, that no matter what it is that He sends, I remain in love with Him. And I believe that the reason for this has to do with the nature of what it means to live in a loving relationship. And that is always to remain connected. But in the deepest, deepest sense.
Listen to some of the teachings of the Maharal of Prague, who was a great ancestor of the Ba'al Hatanya, and one of the greatest teachers that we've had of what a spritiual life for Jews is meant to be. He tells us that the teaching of Moshe Rabbeinu, of Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad, must come along with V'ahvata et Hashem Elokecha, meaning that you can't have "Love G-d" unless your experience of G-d is some way a reality of unity. And that's to say the following: Da ki avaha hazot she ha'adam nimshat el hashem yitbarach, you should know that the love that a person has that he is drawn to G-d through, hu mitsad atzmo. It's just the way it is, meaning, bli shum tachlit. It doesn't have some ulterior purpose. It's something that's just the way it is. Rak mitsad atzmo shel ha'adam. It's just what we are as human beings. (15:25? Bfreshesh ben ahavah u'yirah, you should know there is a big difference between love and fear. Hareh hayirah hu hamelech, a fear that a person might have of a king, she rau yirah bapanav, who it's appropraite to be in fear of, ze eyno mistad atzmo shel adam, that's not coming from the person, that's coming formt he circumstances that he's standing in. Meaning, he's so to speak, reacting to something outside of him, and feeling in fear of it. Aval ha'ahavah, hi mitsad atzmo shel ha'adam. But love, that comes from the person himself. Now this is something that, when you first read it, doesn't totally make sense, I mean, love is something that is felt towards someone. What does it mean that the love here is something which comes from the person himself as opposed to the fear, that's a fear of someone. But a love, is that not also a love of? No, it says a fear is something which is created by something external, which you're standing in fear of, but love is something which is derived from the inner being of the person. And the proof being, it says, after all, it says about our love of G-d, V'ahavta et hashem elokecha b'chol l'vavcha, you are to love G-d with all of your being. It never says to fear G-d, that you are to fear G-d with all of your being. And then he goes on, lifnei ki ha'ahavah m'kubelet yoter, ha'adam efshar she tihyeh b'chol l'vavo. It's something which is totally in the person and can't be separated from him. Even if all of the sufferings that can come in the world, come upon this person, af im baim kol hayisurim baolam, ha'ahava she hi b'etzem, eyn kan bitul. A love which is essential can never be broken, ki eyn inyan ha'ahavah, because the love of G-d is nothing but the deveikut bo b'tsad atzmo (17:58) but the complete communion with Him from his own selfhood. [hebrew text]…. This is something which is essential to who we are as human beings, so it doesn't matter how much suffering and travail come upon a person, it cannot destroy something which is the essence of who we are. I'll give you a mashal, because he knows that this is something which is kind of hard to align yourself with. It's like fire. You know, fire always rises. That's the way fire is. Fire rises, and fire is hot. Now you could bring as much as you want against the fire to make it stop rising and stop being hot. Go ahead, do whatever you want to make it stop rising and stop being hot. You can put it in a very cold place. You can run something on it, so that it's not going up but that it's going down somehow, but it's not going to work. The reason why it's not going to work is because the minute it stops doing what it does as fire, it stops being fire. You can't make fire that's not hot. Fire in its essence is hot. That's just what it is. So, too, says, the Maharal, we are in our essence, lovers. Whatever you want to do to us, whatever you might do, and indeed it's done, you can't take that away from us. Because it is an existential definition of what it menas to be a human being. You can't get rid of that. And the reason you can't take it away, he explains, is because G-d is one. And that is to say the following. As one is relating to that which is coming upon him as something which is outside of him, separate and different to him, antithetical to him, and standing against him, so one is not experiencing the life which is the essential life of who we are . Because the truth of who we are is that we are at one with G-d. That's shema yisrael, hashem elokeynu hashem echad. There is only He, there is no other. And once you know that there is only He, there is no other, then whatever comes your way, there's only He, there is no other. And whatever you're experiencing, there's only He, there is no other. And not only that, but that's true of you, too! There's only He, there is no other. Living in a consciousness like that is a consciousness which denies the dichotomy of us and some kind of world that might be functioning antithetical to us. But rather, life becomes something that is rather than lived in dichotomy, life is lived in unity. And when life is lived in unity, then it's all experienced, and this is a true experienced of how it is—as a wellspring that is always flowing. And you yourself is part of that wellspring. It's not like there's you and there's stuff that's working on you, we're all part of the wellspring.
Now there are interactions between the elements so to speak of that wellspring. The unity that we experience is not as one which is experienced as one which doesn’t have differentiation and distinction. But nevertheless, we're all the wellspring that is flowing. The reason that I'm using this image, which is the image that the Rabbis teach is to bring us back to what we were touching upon last week and that was exactly as we were taught it. Because if you remember, the mishnah teaches in the pirkey avot, that there were these five wise men. There was the man whose ability was to hold any water put into him. His teaching was to always have a good eye. See things as good, see things as postivity, as a recipient--as he is. Because he is. And then there was the man who ashrei yulad'to. Who was the son of the joyous mother, who taught always seek to connect to others so that the two of you can birth something new in the synthesis which comes of having a chaver tov. And then there was the great teacher who was called a chassid, who taught not only those who you can birth something together with, but be a shachen tov. Those who live in physical proximity, even though you don't experience your life as being shared with them. That's okay, you're next to each other? Be good to that person, be a shachen tov. And then there was the man who was a yareh chet, who always lived in powerful fear and awareness of the boundaries. And he taught, always pay attnetion to the consequences, roeh et hanolad, always pay attnetion in this world. Make sure that where you invest is where you're going to receive. But the final statement, which Rebbe Yochanan ben Zakkai accepted as being the most powerful, was spoken in the most inclusive and the deepest of all of them as the path that man is to walk was the one taught by Reb Eliezer Ben Arach, which was taught by the man who was an overflowing wellspring, a ma'ayan mitgaber, an overcoming wellspring, and his teaching was, have a lev tov, have a good heart. And we realized in understanding him and his teaching, Reb Eliezer Ben Arach is actually teaching that if you experience life as I do, as an overflowing well, so then your heart becomes one that pounds with all of existence in a way in which everythign you come in contact with, you're actually giving life to. You're always beating a heart which is a heart which is giving life to whatever it is that you come in contact with because you are living the wellspring of life. That's what it menas to have a lev tov.
But here's the deeper teaching. And this is the one which is teaching, which Rashi says, is the meaning of b'chol me'odecha. And that is to say that to have the lev tov, which is Malchut, which is David, to have the lev tov, which includes them all, is the heart which really can include it all, because everything it experiences, everything it's connected to is part of this flowing wellsrping of life. That means, that when something comes against you, when something comes not for you, antithetical to what it is that you were hoping for. So if you're attached to the lev tov, and if you're attached to the ma'ayan bitgaber, so then it will be transformed. It doesn't have to be transformed—it is! Something which is moving things forward in a way in which the evolving relation of G-d's life, of which you're a part and which is not coming to you is a part, all become participant in bringing life to all.
David Hamelech actually says, kos yeshuot esah, v'shem hashem ekrah, I raise up this cup and in raising up the cup, he's describing I raise up the cup, whatever it is that has been given me in it, and I call out in G-d's name.
So actually I want to share something with you which I feel is a demonstration of this, that I experienced the other evening with a group that I'm workign with, in which we're basically working in a personal process in maintaining deveikut. And someone was sharing a particular event that happened to him in which he lost it. Basically, what happens in the group at this point, people are sharing moments that hit them, when they experience emotional drop, in which they become disconnected, Pushing it off. "Pushing it off" means emotionally angry, frustrated, disappointed, sad, disconnected, numb, any one of these emotions which are basically, I can't do it, don't want to deal with it.Since you can't own, can't deal with it, don't want to deal with it, so you get angry, or you get frustrated or have all kinds of emotive reactions that are basically a way of saying, this is not for me.
So, we've been more and more attentive to that kind of shift, when it becomes, this is not for me. So one of the people in the group told a tale of how he's been spending studying a particular section of the Shulchan Aruch, that has to do with Shabbos, and last Shabbos, he was coming home from shul, and he was with these guests also that he was holing to show a beautiful Shabbos to, and the truth is, before he went to shul, that the gate to the apartment building area where he lives was a little but stuck, so he called up to his wife, you know, to see if someone could take care of this before Shabbos comes. So, gate closed, went to shul, nice davening, the whole thing, and on his way back, he's walking up the street with these people who he's showing this great Shabbos to, and he sees ahead of him at the gate, the Ba'al Habayit, who's not shomer Shabbos observer, standing there with a flashlight, and there's someone there from the building who is a Shabbos observer with a screwdriver, tinkering with the gate trying to get the thing open. Now the particualr section of the Shulchan Aruch that he is learning is all about fixing things on Shabbos and not fixing things on Shabbos. So he's walkign up the street, and he's watching this scene, and starts getting angry, frustrated, disappointed, et cetera. So, there's a whole process around this, but we wanted to look at this, what went on there. Initially his feeling was, initially I was angry, but I caught it, and let go, and it was okay. But as we explored more deeply, and went back to the scene, so the moment that everything dropped out for him, was the moment that he saw (laughing) the screwdriver. That was it. There's this picture of a screwdriver. And he sees this person holding the screwdriver. Like that's it. Right? So we just kind of hold on that, what's going on with the screwdriver, and goes into the emotions there. It's like he's really disappointed, angrier, and angrier. What's the anger saying—which is the next step. He says, "How could you not know what to tell them? How could you not know what the rule is? How could you not speak up? What's the matter with you? Why don't you ever speak up? You never speak up!" And as we turned the questions into statements, which is what they really are—in asking the question, Why don't you know? You're not really disappointed. It's really a statement of You ought to know. You should know the answer to this question. You should know what needs to be done here. You should be speaking up. What's the matter with you? You never speak up! And all the accusations and then going deeper into that, and if you don't speak up, that means you're weak—just asking him: And if you don't speak up, what does that mean?
–Weak. And what happens to people who are weak? –People who are weak, nobody ever listens to! And if nobody ever listens to you, then? –Then I'm worthless? All of us have this. It's not any different for him than it is for any of us. I should know. I should speak up. Which is of course, a bunch of malarky. You should know? Well, if you should know, why don't you? I guess, it's not that you should know, it's that you want to know. Ah, you want to know, well, that's something else entirely. But should know is generating exactly the kind of push-off which turns him into the kind of angry, disconnecting, experiencer reacting to this situation which is one which "I'm not going to take this. I can't take this." And ultimately, I can't take myself. I can't take myself.
So this passage, which as became clearer to him, these kinds of lies that he's telling himself, and it became clearer and clearer to him that it's a lie to say I should have known what to say. That's not true, that he should know what to say. It's that he would want to know what to say. And as, one by one, he went down and realized he became released of that activity, which is completely been built out of his unwillingness to accept life as a flowing well which is bubbling up with a new life form, which is him responding to this circumstance in a way in which he, and all, will grow from. You see, to be there with a lev tov, which is to be as one who is in the spring and life flowing now into its next realization through him, It's all one, this is where it's taking me, this is where it's going, it's to be modeh and take you to the meod. Because this is how deep Chazal are. That to be modeh, no matter what G-d sends your way, is to achieve and connect with the meod. Because, what is the meod? The meod is the more than what already is. And this it the new level. The meod is the more than what already is. And in order for us to move to the more than what already is, you have to be willing to shake loose of what already is. And the way that happens is when you get hit by those events which are initially experienced as being antithetical to us, because of course they are—they are antithetical to the way we already are. But if you experience them as being part of the ma'ayan mitbgabeir, so then you'll experience them as taking you to the meod. That's why the rabbis say that meodecha is someone who's modeh ben b'midah tovah, ben b'midat puranut. Makes no difference, because he's living the meod, he's living the more than what already is. What stands in the way is the self-depreciating belittling voice which accusees you of not having the stuff to live up to the realization. That's what that accusation is. You should have known, you should have spoken up, you should have done this, you should have done that. You're wrong for that, it's no good because they're doing it the way I've told them a thousand times that they shouldn't, blablablablablabla, you can say it as many ways as you want, you don’t' have what it takes to live what is now here. You don't have what it takes, And it will take whatever voice which will be the one which is your smallness speaking, it'll be whatever voice you can train, or you've trained yourself to bespeak your miniscule nothingness in the face of what life is sending you. His voice was I'm weak, and the way he kept weak in place was Weak people, no one hears, and they're basically worthless. That's the lock.
That's why, by the way, the ma'ayan has to be a ma'ayan mitgaber. It has to be an overcoming spring because what it needs to overcome are the fears of our worthlessness and our smallness that we're not up to the task. That's why it had to be Rabbi Eliezer ben Arach, whose name literally means G-d is my help, I'm the son of worht. Arach, Ayin reish chaf. I'm the son of worth, because he experiences full worthiness and worthfulness by always experiencing life as being a ma'ayan mitgaber. And he is always able to be experiencing life as being a ma'ayan mitgaber because he's always attached to worth. Well, when this person came to this realization and was able to clear away the garbage that was holding him in his disconnected, disassociating exiled consciousness—exiled in the deepest sense of he can't be in the world The world is just against him, hitting against him, against him, against him (sounds of a fist and hand together) all the time. Well, when that cleared, the one word which he had to describe it was cheirut—I'm released. And I want to tell you something. It was very beautiful because it was in the context of the group.
Now one of the members of the group was sitting like, quietly, while other people were responding to what was going on for them, until at the end when he said, well, I was there. He was physically there that Friday night, when this happened. And I want to tell you that even though you didn't say a word, you pushed everyone off. I could not relate to you at all. You were just completely push-off energy. And I want to tell you now, now I feel so close to you. Because what had shifted, and this is really what happens, what had shifted is that the reality that he was now living was of connectivity, because he had cleared away all the voice of denigration and was now able to live life as the ma'ayan mitgaber. And attachment to it. So now everyone aronud him felt close to him, because that's what happens. Because when you live your life as a ma'ayan mitgaber, you become a lev tov. You become a beating good heart, And now everyone is drawing life sustenance with you, and even from you. When you have moved into that enlightened place, which is the truth of who you are. This is really the root of it all. And living a life of deveikut, as the Maharal says, and the reason it's so important to tell us here that it's all one, and that it's the essence of who you are because any slivering of a hair-space miss that it's all one and this is my essence of being a loving, communing being with G-d and the life he is living thorugh me and everything around me, so as much as you'll be missing that, so you'll be missing love. And as much as you'll be missing that, you'll be missing the ability to be in meodecha. To be in the moment when G-d becomes, ki v'yachol, more than He was before. So to speak. But it's ouronly place on the planet is in making life more than it was before And the only way we can make life more than it was before is when we leave behind all of the deprecations that we have speaking to us saying, Not for you, baby, not for you. That's the creativty, which is a joined co-creating with the Creator of the Universe. And it's why we saw—the Torah is built on this—as we saw the first thirty-two words, Bereshit barah elokim, et cetera, the first thirty-two words, which is the gematria of lev, have the word following them, the thirty-third word, tov. So that the whole Creation is lev tov. That's what it is, it's a pounding heart beating with sourcing of life and of the waters of goodness which are always bubbling up with new and ever-changing forms, which as much as you are relating in unity to the source of that wellspring, all of those changing forms will be possibilities for you of growing into your meod. And this requires the direction that meod has, of clarity of purpose, and it requires an attachment always to the essence of who we are as beings of G-d. This is why it derives from Yaakov, it's the same word. But it comes to its expression in David. In the "practics" of it—whatever you send my way, kod yeshuot esah, whatever you send my way, I’m raising up the cup of salvation. It's all salvation, I'm raising it up. Kos, by the way, is the same gematria as the word elokim, Elokim being the aspect of divine justice. So that David Hamelech is saying, I'm raising up the kos, which is elokim, which is your judgements, as yeshuot, as salvations. And I'll tell you why, because Yesha, is yesh ayin, seventy. That's what David says, those are my seventy years. And you know what my seventy years are? My seventy years are, indeed, the years I was never menat to have. If you remember, he was meant to not be born, until Adam Harishon donated seventy years. Which is to say, because David experience his life, not as some separate phenomenon, so he is always living life as a wellsrping flowing through him. It's not my particular life. I am a mouthpiece for all of life. Yesh Ayin, Yesh ayin, which is the ma'ayan. That's yechuot, kos yeshuot esah.
(Someone passing out tissues/ "It's the flowing ma'ayan," the tearful participant says) And I want to tell you something. It's a most beautiful thing. Which is also about Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, and David. And that is that the Gemara in kuf tet vav in Masechet Pesachim, says in the end of time, G-d's goin to make a great feast. And when everyone's done eating this great feast at the end of time, there's going to be the question of who is going to be mechubik with the benching. Who is going to lead the birkat hamazon, the blessing after the meal. So G-d's going to turn to Avraham, and say, "Avraham, maybe you? Would you like to take the cup for bentching?" So Avraham's says, "No, no, out of me came Yitzchak, it's true, but also Yishmael." "Oh, okay, Yitzchak, how about you, will you be mechubik with the benching? Yitzchak ben Avraham." Now, Yitzchak says, "No it can't be me, because from me came Yaakov, but also came Esav." So now He turns to Yaakov, and he says, "Yaakov, please, would you please bentch for all of Life?" So Yaakov says, "You know, I can't. You know, I married two sisters, and the Torah prohibits marrying two sisters." So He turns to David, and David says, "Kos yeshuot esah, ub'sem adon-ai ekrah. Tsarah v'yagon emtsah. Ub'shem ado-nai ekrah." So he takes the cup and leads the final, closing blessing to G-d for all of the sustenance that life has provided. It was the final bentching. But you see, only David could because only he lived out of the dichotomy. It's for me, you know, G-d, it's not either, or. For me, it's not either Yishmael or Yitzchak. For me, it's not Esav or Yaakov, For me it's not two wives. For me, whatever has been has been, whatever is, is, and it's all You and Your name, which I now bless. That's how it ends. That's how existence ends. With that final bentching. Taking all of how life has sustained us with. And putting it into that one cup, that specifically David will be the one who can bless. And that's because it's exactly what the Rambam taught us about David, it's the truth—he's never cholek kavod l'atsmo. He is never separating himself out to give himself honor. Because as soon as you do that, you cease to be a participant and mouthpiece for the wellspring which is life. And it's exacltly the way it works.
I have another story. I was walking through the Old City yesterday morning. I go sometimes early in the morning. And there was a group of people, let's put it this way: clearly bigger, clearly stronger than me walking by in one of the alleyways which weren't necessarily one of the better places to be hanging out early in the morning. So I'm looking at this and all of a sudden it it became clear to me, that maybe they'd be bigger than me in this form, but they're not bigger than what I really am. Nothing could possibly be. And that's the truth. Because there is nothing bigger than what we really are. And soon as you're attached to it, there's nothing that could overcome that, because it's a ma'ayan mitgaber. The primary overcoming that the ma'ayan must overcome is your own fears. And your own fears rooted in your experience of yourself as a separate, small, inconsequential speck that can't stand up to it.
Could you repeat the translation of what David says?
I'd love to. What King David speaks are the verses in the chapter of 166 in Tehillim. G-d, I love You, that begins, You always hear my voice. You turn Your ear towards me, as I call out to you with all of my life in all of my days. Even when the pangs of death surrounded me and the narrow straights of hell found me, and I found trials and tribulations, I called out in Your name. Please, G-d, redeem, save my soul. Oh, G-d, you're always merciful. You always have compassion. You guard the fools, you raise them up, You save me. Bring me to my resting because you have brought upon me. You have saved me from death. You have taken my eyes away from tear and my legs from falling. I always walk before You, G-d, these are the lands of life. Asd I speak, I believe. Even though I've suffered. I once said people are false, but now I know and can return to You, G-d, the great cup of salvation, which I raise up as I call Your name.
So what the Rabbis teach of David's song here is that he raises up the cup whether it's tsarah b'yagon, whether it's gifts that are overtly and apparently for his beneft. He raises up the cup. Kos yehuot esah. Because he's always calling G-d's name. That's his communing with G-d which is a communing of meodecha. A communing of the more than was. The more than was. This is why the Rabbis also teach, the way in which G-d saw it all—if you remember at the very beginning, we saw that the first thing that G-d does after He creates is that He looks at it all with an ayin tovah. He created the light, it was good, He created the this, and it was good. Then he looks at it all and He says it's tov meod. On tov meod. On tov meod, the Rabbis say, What's tov meod? That's suffering. Oh my G-d. What's wrong with them? What? Tov meod is suffering? Yeah. Tov meod is suffering. And I'll tell you what I think is happening there. It's very simple. When you look at it all, vayar et kol asher asah. When He saw everything He had made, only when He saw everything that He had made could He say that suffering is tov meod. That, what it does is it pushes everythign to the next level. If you're not seeing everything, if all you're seeing is the pieces, so then just have an ayin tovah. Try to look at it with a good attitude and find what's good in it. But if you can see it all, then you'll see that the yisurim are the meod of creation, they're when it's moving beyond what it already is. That's loving G-d b'chol meodecha, that's the tov meod of creation and it's David Hamelech who brings that.
Why does it have to be Daivd? I believe it's rooted in what the Rambam tells us about his joy. David is the one who "lets loose." And stops worrying about himself.
(59:13 inaudible question) Oh, we could never know that. We can explain it within our context. We can talk about it in our experience of having been that way. But we can never explain why it is that G-d made a world in which that would be the mechanism through which the meod would come into realization. We could never explain or know that. That's something which we just have to surrender to. Because to know and understand that would be to step out of the very consciousness which we've been created with. And to look from the outside at the other possibilities for what could have been, such that there would be a world in which there would be growth without suffering, in which there would be a growth without first there having been a lack which then the grower grows into. Could there be a world in which there would be no lack, but that everything would be growing? Could there be such a world? It's unimaginable to us. You can't have growing without there having been lack that proceded the growing that you grew into. There must have been an empty space that you grew into and filled by virtue of your growth. See, you can't imagine a world in which there would be a growing light without there having previously been darkness. So to ask the question would require of us that we'd somehow have access to the infinite possibilties of what could have been and then wonder, well, why'd you chose this one? But we can't see that, because we're trapped by the consciousness which we have been created with/trapped with/gifted with—the consciousness that G-d has given us. So what we can do is live that to its fullest. In full acceptance. And this is the full resignation—not in the negative sense of giving up, but resignation in the sense of the softness of the touch that we need to live life with.
There is a beautiful teaching that the Rabbis teach us, that Achiya Hashiloni, Achiya was a great prophet of Israel, living in the time of Yiravam. So he gives a prophesy to Yiravam and he says, the kingdom of Israel is going to be destroyed, like a kaneh, a reed on the waters, like a reed is blown on the waters. So the Rabbis say, Boy, look at what Bilaam said, who was such a big rashah. Bilaam who blessed the people, he said that we would be like strong-standing cedars, k'arazim nitayu. The prophet of Israel talks about us being like a reed? And Bilaam, our greatest hater talks about us as being a cedar? What's going on? So they say, well, better the curses of the lovers than the blessings of the haters, because when the winds come, the cedar is toppled. But the reed knows to bend.
So as long as we are standing up strong against—why does it have to be this way? Should have been different! If we stand outside reality, say how it should be, we'll forever be living the accusations which disconnect us from life and block us from the growth that's offered. But if we can surrender in the most beautiful and creative way. I don't know why he made the world this way, I mamash don't know. But I know one thing: You saw it and declared that it was good. And if You saw it and declared that it was good, and therefore kept it, so You're good. And I know that though I can't outside of it and judge it, I can live within it and know that it's all Your lev tov. Once I know that, I can live the fountain. And I can be with what life sends me in its meod. And then we join David in giving a bracha to all that life has sent us, given us, us sustained us with. And can say kos yeshuot esah, in full love of Him. But anything else, the Maharal says, will not be love. Because love is communion and at-oneness with. The full heart.
Questions:
Am I hearing it correctly that there is lev tov and ayin tov? And ayin tov is when you try to experience everything as good as opposed to lev tov is seeing the bad also and you approach it with equanimity?
Not only equanimity, but also creativity. Creativity as in ma'ayan mitgaber. It's nt really equanimity. The equanimity, so to speak, is the root of the creativity. Equanimity means that I am able to equally be present to it as it is, whether it is negative or positive. I am not buffeted around by it all the time. In kabbalistic terminology—its also in the mishne brurah—equanimity has to do with shem havayah, yud jey vav key, shivit hashem l'negdi tamid, whatever's coming against me, so to speak, l'negdi, I always put the name of G-d there. Yud key vav key, which the Gra, the Gaon of Vilna says, has as its main meaning, heyo numtsa ? (1:07:45) it simply is. When you are attached to G-d as "simply is" then you are "simply is." And when you are "simply is", whatever life hits you with, I simply am. That's equanimity. Did I get it right? And elokim, the name of G-d which is the kos, the cup, which holds Him, is the judgemnts and the differences, and the distinctions and the differentiations, which are what we must also relate to in a way in which we creatively respond to them
But what I want to tell you Jackie, and this is crucial, the ability to creatively respond to them is rooted in how much you have the equanimity of shem havayah. And I'll say it in simple language. That when you're hit and buffeted around by all of what life sends you, if you remain rooted in It's all G-d Who is simply being, then whatever hits you becomes a creative opportunity for bringing out the meod. The enxt evlving step. That's the parable of the kane suf, of the reed that remains rooted, and therfore is able to be with what is in a way that is not disconnecting and antagonizing in reactivity, but is rooted in the deep waters and is not prone to topple over as is the angry erez.
I just wanted to hear what the difference practically was, like and how we experinece. Creativity versus--.
Yes, creativity versus equanimity. Creativity is rooted in equanimity. Creativity which is shem elokim, which is the creative force—bereshit barah elokim—has to be rooted in shem havaya in order to relate creatively to the tribulations.
So meaning that when we face a tribulation we don't just say, wow , this is a tribulation; we say, how can I creatively face this?
Absolutely. Now the only way for that to happen is exactly in the kind of process that I describe before. Like in the story. He saw the screwdriver, felt a little angry, he was sure hed taken care of it. But the person who was there witnessing what was happening, threw out the entire event, completely repulsed by this person. Because if you try to skip steps and don’t try to travel through the intensity of the feelings it's arousing. And the intensity of the lies you're telling yourself, so then you will not be guided by the event to what the next growth-filled expression is going to be. You won't grow from it. You'll be like, yeah, I dealt with it. What do you mean, I dealt with it? This is an offering from G-d, from where His life is now opening up to. What do you mean, you dealt with it? Be in it. And hear all the reactivity which is the way of seeing where you are now so that now from there you can move into the meod of where you're next to go to. That's the way you get your guidance. But it has to be rooted in the yud of yud key vav key. You know the process begins with the bottom hey, life as it is. Moves to the vav, my emotive experience of it. Then it leads to the hey, the upper hey, which is your ability to think and cognate around it, these are the reactive thoughts still. Then still in the hey, moves to evaluating true or false. Then moves up to the yud, I receive your wisdom, G-d. And I'm a receptacle for it. And now I’m going to follow Your name down. Into the hey, a new perspective. Down to the vav, an emotively responding to and relating to and the down to the bottom hey which is David choosing to be modeh to whatever You sent me and to creatively produce to that by being attached to, in Chassidic teachings, that upper wellspring which is the upper yud, which travells down, the source of the spring, which is the yud, and then the spreading of the spring which is the hey, and then the river that follows down through the vav and then down into the bottom hey which is your creative choice to where you will direct that river to. Where is life going? It travels through you in your choosing, if you are modeh to whatever it sends you, and then you become co-creator of the meod, which is both the specific individuality which is yours, as we saw in Yaakov, and the divine connection of that, which was Leah, and the realization of it, through David, by accepting whatever life sends in real and true equanimity and surrender to it as it is, which then breathes and births the choice of where you will go and where it is to go now. It's a paradoxical spiritual condition that requires of that first the surrender, which sounds so passive, and therefore it seems like like I'm just going to accept it and be with it and quiet down and and basically die in peace. No, its not that way at all. You don't die there at all. You know why you don't die there? Because life is an effervescent wellspring bubbling up through you. All you have to do is there is you shake off the shackles, of the Michal, who is looking out the window of your self-consciousness, saying, Get back to the way you're supposed to be. Get back to the way you are, have been, David, what are you making such a scene for? There the Rambam says if you would have been cholek kavod l'atsmo, you would have immediately gone into Galut. Because it would have been moneh for himself, the simchah and the love, the joy and the love which that moment was bubbling up for him. Mamash would have been the end of malchut, the end of everything. But instead, he's dancing it up like crazy. Almost as if the scene needed all of the elements of it. It needed Michal looking out the window, and it needed David being misgaber on that . It needed all of it for that life force to flow, but anything else would have been galut, like the Rambam says. The galut would have been the galut of life, detachment from G-d. These aren't easy spaces. They require meditative conditions. They require anchoring yourself all the time in this. This isn't something that once you've got it, you've got it. Not all all, We've got to say Shema Yisrael at least. Some people say it five times a day. They get up, they say, Shema Yisrael, and then during korbanos, they say it again during Shacharis. Then they say it again at Maariv, then you say it again before you go to sleep, then you say it again before you die. Just like, Shema Yisrael, all the time you have to be saying it. It's not so to speak our natural condition in the sense of the externalities of the forms that we live. It's got to be reawakened. Because to function we're always functioning in a consciousness of separateness. You always have to be reconnecting yourself, consciously choosing it. That's the way G-d made his world, Jackie, whether we like it or not. Why didn't He just make a world where we'd all be enlightened, where we'd just know this all of the time? Why did it have to be like the Rambam says, and avodah gedolah, a very great work, which is stop stopping yourself, as the Rambam says. Stop stopping yourself from connecting to this. Why? We can never know. But it's the great work of meod.
So the medo and the lev to, it's not like the placidness of equanimity, it's the flowing joy of really being alive.
Creative joy, that's why I was emphasizing last week: eym habanim smecha, that's flowing through it. In fact, the kabbalah says that the wine that is in the cup that David is holding is the wine of the happy mother who is birthing, because yayin is gematria shivim, it's also seventy. And it relates both ot the malchut and also to binah. It's joyous wine. He has to be holding up a cup of joyous wine. There's also a drunken wine, which in the kabbalah is evil wine. This the Ba'al Hatanya talks about. The drunken wine is when you just disconnect and cop out. The joyous wine is an opening to creativity.
I'm wondering with the ayin tov. 1) If you see things with an ayin tov, so how can you deal with things that are not tov, in the sense that, what if something needs to be addressed.
This is not pacific, in the sense of just accept it as it is. There is a difference between reactively fighting and responding appropraitely . Reactive fighting comes from anger: this is not the way it should be. Responding rightly is rooted in the equanimity of shem havayah. This is exactly what should be right now. But part of what should be is me in the picture, called upon to fight this evil, if that's what it is.
But how do you fight if not in a reactive way, and by calling it evil are you not having an ayin lo tov.
No, in calling it evil, you're describing that this is something which is a lack in creation that I am hear now to fill. It might involve chasing down the person doing evil. It might involve taking him to court. It might involve responding right on the spot physically.
You don't call that reacting?
In English, it's hard to make that havchanah, but in a language which we'll kind of agree to semantically, if it's angry, pushing away, then that's a reactivity, which is not rooted in the equanimity of shem havayah. And therefore, I'm not creatively focusing on what this growing in creation is meant to happen now—I'm just pushing it off. But you might have to shoot. You might have to deveop a tank to fight these people. We're not talking about something which, not necessarily mean action.
Can you give an example, like the story you told. How could the passerby have dealt with the situation in a different way. I'm not talking about the internal dialogue. I'm talking about—
Exactly. I asked him. How would you have liked to respond now? Imagine that you have returned to the scene, and choose how you want to be there. So what did you choose? He chose to see the screwdriver, breathe and feel calm. Consider whether he knew whether this was permitted or not, and to go over to the person with a smile and say, Remember, it's Shabbos, and I think there's a question about what you're doing. What I learned is this. Shabbat Shalom.
I did something similar and the other person's reaction was very. I understand that if someone makes Kiddush and they don't keep Shabbat, whether it's kosher.
Whether you can be exempted by it. Whether you can fulfill your obligation through it.
So I went up to someone who made Kiddush at a meal where I was. So I mentioned it. I said, you know, I didn't make it as an attack, I said I'm just saying this because I’m concerned for myself… but it didn't feel like the next step was connection, and I don't know if I was looking at it from a negative eye. Maybe I could have said, well, he's trying. How would you interpret that situation, applying the logic of the class.
It's possible that you did the right thing.
But you said that the next step was like ayin tov, which is good eye, and then you connect with others. I don't know if it did, but on a certain level it did, because we ended up having a two hour conversation about halachah, but—
And I want to tell you something else. It's not the end of the story. The story didn't end at that moment. Who knows where the person went with that and what you set in motion.
How do you know?
You don't. Unless you trust.
So you don't think that me seeing the situation with an ayin tov—
There's no guarantee that in the moment the person is going to say, thank you, you enlightened being, for that truth.
I don't know if in that moment I had an ayin tov.
I don't know either. But I'm saying you can't judge yourself in that particular moment of time. Again, for many reasons, one of them being, the story's not over. It will only be over when David raises the cup at the end of creation and says, I see it, kos yeshuot ekrah ub'shem ado-nai ekrah.
David Hamelech hu achi meluchlach.
Because his hands are full of blood, and Elishevah. That's what the Rabbis said, David did it so that the pathway would be open for us as individuals to do teshuvah.
It's impossible to imagine that the one who would raise that cup would never made a mistake even once. You wouldn't say, ah, the one who's raising the cup, he never made a mistake even once. What does that have to do with what we've been through?
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript:
I walked into a friend's birthday party, who's the Rosh Yeshiva up the hill at Makor Chaim, David Zinger. It's like a whole yeshiva up there, like three hundred guys, they're all dancing, you know, this and that, we'd hang out together to ferbreng with the kids. Well he says, What are you thinking about? I said, I'm thinking about simcha b'tuv layvav. He said, That's great, because that''s shvat. That's just what I was thinking about, simchah b'tuv layvav. Shvat.
(What does that mean?)
It means joy with a good heart. And I wanted to continue the exploration from last time, if you remember that the Rambam teaches about some crucial things for us in terms of our work in coming to understand the nature of love, and it feels like something of a summary of where we've travelled to see this Rambam. I'll just remind you, he brings it at the end of the year; basically, he brings it at the end of his halachas that have to do with Sukkot, being the tekufot hashanah, being the time that that year turns around—which is why we turn around so much on Sukkot and on Simchat Torah. Because it's called in the Torah the tekufat hashanah, it's the surrounding of the year and it has to do both with the fact that the year has come to an end and also with surrounding light, which is called in Kabbalah the mafikim, the surrounding light, hakafah. And so we do all kinds of hakafos on Simchas Torah. And we sit inside something which is maykif upon us, we sit inside a Sukkah, which surrounds us, and those makifim and considered to have their origin in a world called as we've come to know as binah, the mother world of joyous birthing—aym habanim smeachah, which is why, of course, Sukkot is such as holiday of joy. Vayhitah ach sameach is spoken about Sukkot specifically, because Sukkot is the holiday of the time of the deep expression of the joy of birthing, the joy of giving.
And in fact, the teachings of Chassidut have it that, in looking at the paradigm of Torah, avodah and gemilut chassidim—that is, the three pillars that the world stands on—so the standing pillar of Sukkot is gemilut chassidim, when you stand outside of your boundaries and become a giver. You stand outside of the confines of your house, and you become a giver. And there is the transition in the teachings of Chassidut, that is the transition into the world of binah, which is the transition of the ability and the actualization of birthing. That's why it has eight days—if you remember when we talked about Chanukah, which is the eigth sefirah down from the top—this eight-day phenomenon of Sukkah is also a reference to its aspect of being the eighth sefirah up from the bottom. And that's why Sukkot has these eight days.
But the point is, and what is most precious for us, is that it is the time when we enter into the birthing mother who holds within her the potentialities, and most importantly, the fountain of life—the fountain of giving—and the powerful ability to overcome those things which come in the way of sharing. And I speak of this with such significance because binah, as we've seen in the Zohar, is the origin of love. And even though we're used to chesed being the place from which love originates, the truth is that it's binah, and we came to understand that chesed is really the origin of the love of G-d, and chochmah and chesed are the origin of the love of G-d, which have to do with a more static state of being, which is wisdom of what is, and chesed, which is the connection to what is. Remember that we explained that gemilut chassidim, the giving of chesed, always requires the injection of the aspect of gevurah, of power, of something that recognizes distinction and delineation and therefore has an other to give to (whereas chesed belongs really in the world of bitul, on the level of abnegation on the level of being a static principal.) This is the opposite of what most people think, but we spent time explaining this at one point. That it is a being in existence and in chochmah, it's a being in being, meaning that there is no other than His being.
Binah, so she is the one who turns outwards, and she becomes the ma'ayan . She becomes the lev haolam and the ma'ayan, she becomes the heart of the world, and the spring from which giving springs forth. And so we find, interestingly, that the other theme of Sukkot is the Simcha Beit Hashoevah, the great, joyous event of the water drawing, which was the special event once a year in the Beit Hamikdash when the Cohen Gadol would go down to the spring that is at he bottom of Har Habayit. You can still visit there today—it's a very striking place, you can go there through the tunnel. Chiskiyahu, that's the mea ha gichon. He would go down and draw up waters, and then trek back up the hill with these waters and go up on the mizbeach, and pour these waters down so that they would return to the depths of where they would come from. Basically, doing nothing. (Laughing) He'd draw them up, he'd bring them up to the top, and everyone would be in tremendous joyous extasy, then he would spill them out, and they would do back down into the tehom, so that I suppose that next year, he would draw them up again. And this happened during the seven days of Hag HaSukkot, during the primary cyclical phenomenon, which is the water cycle, which is the first thing you learn about when you learn about environmental phenomena, that there is an ecological phenomenon as a system which replenishes itself. This cycle is generally most available to us in terms of visualizing it and realizing it as this water cycle, the basic cycle that is celebrated at Sukkot—tekufot hashanah—which is the time of the cyclical aspect of the year, when the birthing is the birthing and then it returns to its place of reorigination, down into the tehom, to be drawn again. And man has the one and simple function of being he who transfers it where it has come to, up through some raising, which will then return into its bed of primary beginning existence. And this is what it looks like, and it brings people such tremendous joy. Dancing like crazy, and we talked last week about Hillel HaZakeyn, dancing, saying, Im ani kan hakol kan, if ani is here, then everything is here, and it really is an image of that, like all of the world is being passed through me as I draw the waters and pour them down.
And this is the consciousness of binah, meaning that she is the life-giving force, but she comes with a consciousness of that life being flowed through me, and it needs that—otherwise it becomes a most disoriented and disconnected phenomenon, like it did for Chava, when she said, Kaniti ish et hashem, that I had made a man like G-d, really the way most of the mefarshim read it, although really you could read it "with G-d," but the sense of it is that she had done like G-d, which is true, but she had done it from a disconnected place, having already eaten of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, so that her name, which was Chaya, became Chava, which in Arameic actually means "the snake," a problematic name. And in giving birth to Cain from there, Cain and Hevel, brought the first fraternal strife into the world, because their life's playing out really was an expression of a consciousness of binah that had been separated from the originator of life, so their reality is one of contest and of jealousy, which we looked at.
But the point is, when the consciousness is right, so it's very joyous. So today I want to get a more of a look at this, as we began to explore last week in the Rambam, because this simcha is not only the place of birthing that we're describing, but it's also the place of love, which the Rambam taught us that the simcha, she yismach adam basiyata mitzvah ahava ahavta hakel shetziva bahem avodah gedolah hi. Put them together, joy and love. So I want to contemplate some of that with you today. That introduction is a way of getting you oriented in terms of what kind of a spiritual reality we're orienting ourselves toward and referring to, and to also remind you that it has to do with this aspect of surrounding, holding us, containing us, makif.
I don't expect you to understand everything; this orientation is just to give us an alignment with something so that we can explore it together in terms of how it comes down into actual halacha that the Rambam poskins at the end of Hilchos Sukkah, and tells us there's this great avodah of asiat hamitzvah v'avodat hakel.
So last time, we saw that the Rambam told us that the great avodah and of love is to not get in the way. And he said that kol hamoneah atzmo mesimchah, reui lhiparah mimeno. That this person becomes like a Pharoah, basically, becomnes a separater. And he told us later, How does it happen that you are going to get in the way of this. The phenomenon of getting in the way is called neges da'ato, and kavod l'atzmo. His consciousness, his da'at, awareness, becomes bloated and coarse, and he separates himself out for his honor. So if someone were to ask you, how do you get in the way of love and joy? So I'll tell you. Become stuck-up with yourself, egoically involved, bloated in your da'at. And the reason for this is because the function of da'at is connection. As in vayedah Adam et ishto, that he connected to her in terms of carnal knowledge, which is an unfair translation of what the Torah means when it says knowledge, It's not really talking about the physical aspect of the knowledge, although that's clearly participant, but it's talking about the mentalities merged, it's talking about the personhood merged, and that's what da'at does. As soon as you're neges da'at, so then your da'at becomes coarse and bounded and blocks the ability to merge with another, because you've become basically stuck up with yourself, rather than being in a connective mode.
The other reflection of that, as it comes down in terms of personality, is this person will be cholek kavod l'atzmo. You'll see him standing on the side. Not necessarily standing on the side like the wallflower at a party. He might be standing in the middle of the party. But he's basically being cholek kavod l'atzmo. Meaning that his orientation is that he should be able to establish his honor and recognition in the world, in a way in which people will provide him with the worth that he so is desperately speaking. Or by simply wanting to experience life intensely, and so his orientation is attempting to get a hold of life, get a touch of life. That's cholek kavod l'atzmo. These are the reflections of how a person will block the simchah and tuv levav, and the simchah and the ahavah that are meant to flow through him. Imagine the Cohen going down to draw the waters and then coming up onto the mizbeach, saying, This is stupid, man, I just drew them up, and now I’m going to throw them down again? What are we doing here? We're not doing anything. We're just drawing the waters and pouring them back down, and then they get buried back down into the ground, go intot the tehom and then literally flow back down through the underground channel back into the gichon. As soon as he becomes self-conscious about that, and demands for himself that he should have significant place, then he's going to step down off that altar and not be interested in that process at all. It's only as much as he's in joy involved. It would be really like a mother whose in the birthpangs saying, this is stupid, this child is coming down into the world, and he's just going to be buried again in a couple of years, I mean, what the heck am I doing? It's really like that, that's what you're doing, I mean, how long is the kid going to live? Seventy, eighty, ninety years? A hundert und tsvantsik. In the end he's going to be back in the ground.
But it's only when a mother selflessly becomes a mother of life, that she allows that to pass through her and the more selfless she is about it, in the sense of I see this as a flow and a fountain which is coming through me, so the more she'll be able really to be joyous in giving that birth. Chazal actually say this. They say that the passage in the Torah which describes G-d getting sad that He's made man, v'yitazev el libo, He got sad in his heart. It's at the end of Parshat Bereshit. This marvelous Parshat Bereshit, it all starts to fall apart fairly early on, and by the end of Parshat Bereshit,
G-d is sad about the whole thing. So there is a midrash that asks, He's sad at the end, but wasn't He happy at the beginning—yismach Hashem b'ma'asav? He happy at the beginning? Didn't he see what was going to be? Didn't he forsee it? So the midrash answers, of course He forsaw it, just like a mother and a father forsee the death of their child. And nevertheless, they are joyous in celebrating his coming into the world. Now that's a deep thing, it's not just a trip people are playing. I am joyous in what is, and I celebrate it as it is, by being a place through which it will pass. And that's fine, and that's mamash the only way to live a kind of a life which remains connected to the eim habanim smecha.
So binah is actually called l'hotsi davar mitoch davar, the power of drawing out one thing from another. And it's the origin of creativity, and interestingly, the origin of joy and of love. They all begin there and they all, so to speak, get divvied out along the way. So one thing that I can certainly say practically is being attentive to that is really the place.
And I want to tell you a story, and it's a little bit embarrassing, but that's okay, because we're all friends already, and that is that mamash the Torah that I'm teaching you right now is derived from what I'm going to tell you about. And that is that there is a group of boys from this yeshiva up the hill, that had for some time been coming to learn with me Sunday mornings. I was sending sort of confusing messages whether it was happening or not happening. And they have to come special from home in order to get into Bat Ayin on time for us to learn together. So it came down to that I had said it wasn't going to happen and one of the guys shows up. So at that point, I'm like open the door, and I watch myself going into this space of mamash cholek kavod l'atzmo. Like, here's this one high school kid, he's a tenth grader, and I finally had a morning opened up for me to do the things that I want to do. To learn the things I want to learn. And so he comes in the door, and I feel myself, it's like an old pattern of I don't have time for you, so I basically say to him, I don't have time for this right now, I'm busy. You know, when you get it together, and it will be a group, so then we'll talk again. So, what am I doing? So if you want, we'll talk for ten minutes. Just won't have another chance to meet him. So he comes in and mamash, I just went into this space of lev tov and this Torah opened up. This Torah opened up in a way that I want to share with you this morning, thanks to him, I mean the kid is not only brilliant, but spiritually very sensitive, and was just the right person for me to be learning with. It's great, we had a great time, and he got to school late but it's their problem.
So I'll tell you what opened up and it's very dear to me. I can't say that it's entirely worked out and it's a most marvelous teaching of the Rambam. To be honest, I don't remember if I said it to you last week or not, but I hope it will be okay.
The Rambam, in teaching the way he did here, hinted to us that he's got a secret that he wants to share. And that is, when the Rambam brings a verse, he intends for you to know that the verse is the origin of what he's teaching. And I'll remind you that the verse he brings is the one that teaches us that we are going to go into exile because we have not served G-d b'simcha ub'tuv levav. In joy, and with a good heart. So you look at that and you say, Joy, I know what that is, but what is tuv levav? What does it mean to have a good heart? Am I a nice guy? Okay, but there is something deeper here. The Rambam is telling it to us in his delineation which is a tremendous chiddush; it didn't have to be this way. That at the end of Sukkot, the place you arrive at is simchah and ahavah, joy and love. How do I know this the Rambam says? Because that's the ultimate achievement in the work of G-d, proof being, it comes at the end of the year, the whole process is ending at tkufat hashanah, and I know it because the ability to return from galut, and here's a deep irony—involves going into the galut which is called Sukkot. The ability to return from or not go into Galut, to be more precise, involves going into the galut, which is Sukkot. You leave your house and you go out into these ephemeral, practically non-existant boundaries of the Sukkah. And we say, let this be a kapara, if I needed to go into galut. And here the Rambam says, that's about the simchah and tuv levav, about which the Torah said, if you are going to lose it, you are going to go into galut. So what you're telling me is that I need to leave and go into galut, so that I will not go into galut.
(What is galut?)
Galut is exile, separation, losing your embeddedness in the place that is meant to be yours. In other words, the simchah v'tuv levav which comes out of Sukkot, or is the reality of Sukkot, is that which goes into these ephemeral boundaries which are called the Sukkah, and only when one is able to be there, only then will one not become disconnected from his earthly root of the land of Israel and the place from which he is drawing the wellsprings of his existence. That's what the Torah is teaching us. So now, the Torah is telling us, I have two things to teach you. Namely, needs to be b'simchah, if you're going to stay here, and it needs to be b'tuv levav, with a good heart. So the Rambam tells you, What's the tuv lev? Tuv lev is love. Otherwise, where does he get his proof from? Tuv lev is love. And then he goes on and says, Merov kol.
If you did not worship G-d with joy and in love, with the awareness that you have bountiful sources, a bountiful source, merov kol. From what would the word be? Exuberant everything? You can't really have rov kol, because kol is everything. You can't really have rov of everything, a lot of everything. It's like the best we can do for abundance in Hebrew is beyond everything. Merov kol, and I do want to check the kabbalah on this but I'm sure that rov kol is a reference back up to binah. Because kol is generally malchut, where it comes down to, so rov kol, is like the sourcing of that.
So this tuv lev what is that? What does it look like in life, and what is the consciousness that it holds such that it should be? I want to show you a teaching in the mishnah which you can actually see yourselves. I want to tell you that one of our greatest teachers, Yochanan Ben Zakkai, whose name means "the man of chen," "the chen man, who is the son of the Zakkai, of the pure one, the zach one." So Yochanan Ben Zakkai had five students. And in a very unusual mishnah, in Pirkey Avot, chapter two, number nine, rather than starting with what he teaches and what his students taught, he tells us about his students, who there were, before he asks them the question which is the life question of what is the good way for a person to be davek. Or ayzeh derech hi tovah, what is the good path she yidbak b'haadam, that a person cling to in his life. So we're going to get a very important teaching from these five studetns. But before he gives us the five studnets, and their teachings, he first tells us who they are. Now that is interesting and unusual. He tells us that I have these five students and they have these five different qualities to them. The first one, anything I say, sticks. He stays with it. He doesn't lose a drop of water. The second one, happy is the mother who gave birth to him. The third one, he is a chassid. The fourth one, he fears sin. The fifth one, he is a flowing wellspring. Or more literally, a maayan mitgabeir, an everflowing, ever able to overcome wellspring. His name is Elazar ben Arach. So have the picture?
(Could you repeat?)
We have Eliezer ben Hurchenus, he's a plastered pit who doesn't lose a drop. The second, Rebbe Yehoshua, happy is the mother who gave birth to him; the third one, Rebbe Yossi HaCohen, he's a chassid; the fourth one, Shimon ben Netanel, he's a yireh chet. He fears sin. And the fifth one, he's a ma'ayan mitgabeir. He is a spring, which is overcoming anything that would standing the way of it. Beautiful, huh? And it's so interesting when you look at these, because he began with a pit that holds the water. Doesn't lose anything. And you end with the one who is the spring who's losing everything, and of course gaining everything by it. And then you have these other three in between who are amazingly enough just who you would expect them to be. Meaning, if it were so, that the first one is actually a holding of what is, well, then that would be wisdom, chochmah. The holding of what is. We're even treated to a color of it being a plastered pit with the translucent waters in it. Exactly the way it's described in the pardes of the Ramak that it was like a sapphire. And then the second: how happy is the mother who gave birth to him. Well, that's binah. Then the third, he didn't have anything to tell you about him, except that he's a chassid. The fourth is a yireh chet. He lives in fear of sin, in fear of the lack, chet. And the fifth, Ah. He's a ma'ayan mitgabeir, he's the wellsprings flowing out. He goes all the way down through the bottom. Getting to understand a little of Reb Yochanan wanted us to know who they are. (36:21)
(That's malchut?)
I'm not sure where that is, I think, yeah. I mean, Let's see, let's be open to what he teaches us. Now we're ready to ask each of them from his place, from consciousness, tzu ur'uh eyzeh hu derech she yidbak b'hadam. So the first one says, what is the good way, the way of goodness that a person should cleave to and cling to in his life? What is the best way to be? Now, in having introduced these five men, and their reality, so an attuned reader will of course understand that we are going to get five different perspectives. Well, so the first one's perspective is ayin tovah. Look from a place of goodness. Seeing the good. Not telling you to do anything. Just contemplate the good. Be in the good. That's what yous hould see. See the light. Ki tov. See the light. See it as it is, with an uncritical mind, not judging. That's what really is an ayin tovah. Judgmental capacity is already getting you into ayin harah. Just see it as it is, it's always good.
Rebbe Yehoshua, who is ashrei yoludat'do, how happy is the mother who gave birth to him; the chassid, chaver tov. Be a good friend. What's a good friend? A good friend, I suppose, is one who is good to the one who is close to him. He may have many chaverim, but he is good to the one who is close to him. Okay. Rebbe Yossi says, be a shachen tov. Who is Rebbe Yossi? He is the chassid. Be a good neighbor. Meaning, you are in close proximity. There is a sense of fraternity in that. Close proximity. Be good to your neighbor. Rebbe Shimon says, Be careful, he's the yireh chet. Be careful and be aware of consequences. Haroeh et hanolad. The one who sees what will come of what he does. He's aware of consequences. Careful person, which is specifically referring to don't lend money unless you know you're going to get it back. And don't borrow money unless you know you're going to pay it back. It's all very bounded.
And then comes Rebbe Eliezer. And each one of these needs its own exploration, clearly, and understanding of how they are associated. But Rebbe Eliezer says the most amazing thing. He says, Lev tov. Now remember who Rebbe Eliezer is. He is the man who is spring which is ever-flowing, overcoming all obstacles. His heart is open. He is creatively producing. It's coming out of him. It does have an association with binah, but the place where I think we are in terms of the hishtalshelut, coming down to things, is this is actually where it begins to become real in the world. The Maharal says, If you look at it, he's the only one who is doing it selflessly. The ayin tovah, he's not really doing anything at all, he's just observing but observing with goodness. But the rest of them, they all have something going on for them. If you are a chaver tov, if you are a shachen tov, if you are a roeh et hanolad. Lev tov, just the flow of life coming through him. Hmm. So from Rebbe Eliezer ben Arach, we're finding out what the lover looks like. And the lover has to be the one who is drawing life from a spring that is flowing. So if you're seeking a loving consciousness, so then a loving consciousness will be in which you experience life in its source as being a spring that is giving out its waters. The more you experience life as being a spring that is giving out its waters, the more tuv lev you will have, and the more tuv lev you will have then the more in love you will be.
I don't know how to explain this, and I'm not sure if this can be explained. But I think that's when people are happy. I think the experience of joy is always like that. It's like creative life is flowing through you and you just want to give it out. People who are really b'simchah, they are not cholek l'atzmam. They are not cutting themselves off from others. They are not in risk at giving life to others. (sic) They are not at loss for sharing what's coming through them, because it is a ma'ayan mitgabeir. That's literally what that is, an ongoing flow that is overcoming everything else. That kind of a consciousness is a consciousness of tuv lev and a consciousness of simchah. But it's almost as if there's a heart is a good heart (sic) if it's good enough to pump life into everything it comes into contact with. That's what a good heart is. (44:27)
By the way, if you count the letters in the words in the Torah, so there are thirty-two letters, the numerical value of the word tov. Tov is the thiry-third word of the Torah, mamash. Bereshit barah elokim, etc. (sic) Because the whole reality of G-d's giving us life and existence is a reality which is one of His giving us ki v'yachol his lev tov. And yes, His lev tov, where binah comes down to, is the malchut. Because there is a lev which is the lev of binah, and she is the feminine of the upper supernal consciousness, and there is a lower lev, the lev of malchut, the actualization of bringing into reality and shraring of the fountain, which is David. So it would seem. I would really find support. I have seen in the Maharal who teaches the teaching but he gives it very subtley, because he doesn't like to teach kabbalah, but it says that any wise person who knows how to be mayvin, will understand how exact the order of these chachamim is. That's as much of an indication of what we are saying is right on. It feels right on. And indeed, when malchut is in tikkun, in leit lah migar mash, she's not seeking it for herself. It's like David says to Michal, You're trying to keep it all in kelim, you're worrying about my honor, Michal otiot keli. Looking out the window, being upset about me letting go in front of everyone. I'm telling you, that's the only way to be a king. And David says in fact, about himself, all the kings like to sit around and have high-falutent conversations that make them look good and important. You know how I spend my day? he says to G-d. Looking at women's bedikah cloths (which you may know this or not, but it's a way of establishing whether a woman is pure for her husband or not pure for her husband—whether they can live together.) What are you spending your time with? any other king would say. V'yadayim m'luchlachut b'dam, he says, My hands are dirty with blood. But it's not the blood of the wars which he had to fight. It's the blood of establishing if people can live together. Because the entire orientation of and purpose of the malchut is to be a blood that flows through the bodies of the people who are in the malchut, in a way that they are held together so that they be given life, unity and connection. He has such a wild way of saying things: Lo chasid ani? Aren't I a chasid, if that's what I spend my day doing?
Someone asked me, so is it simchah that leads to love or love that leads to simchah? I'm not sure it's a fair question. I mean loving people seem to be very full of joy. I'm not sure that all joyous people are full of love.
(I think truly joyous people. There can be fake joyous people that aren't full of love. If it's real joy then they have real love. And when you have real love, you have real joy.)
See, inour teachings, so the eim habaim smecha, the joyous mother of creative giving, is indeed the origin of love. And it all depends on how you see it. Because on the one hand, so love is born of heri chesed as the origin of the love of G-d and on the other hand love is born of her, just by virtue of her, with again the Zohar teaching that the love has its origin in bunah, eim habanim smecha.
(Inaudible)
I'd like to, I'm just kind of listening right now. But what seems, if we're correct in our model, that to love another human being, which comes out of binah, and down the left side so to speak to Aharon HaCohen,who is the hod, so the love of another human being comes out of joyousness. We seek to share it. It's really a weird thing. Seek to share it. You see, wisdom, which is on the right side, and shared that with chesed, is the pleasure and blissful consciousness with what is. And so the blissful consciousness and just what is is a very deep connection to G-d and produces, as the Rambam taught us love of G-d. So when you have a blissful connection of G-d and just being just as it is, then you have love of G-d. He says, You're just going to have to be in love with G-d. That's just what happens when you are in bliss with Him. But you will not necessarily come to be in love with people. They can actually be quite annoying to that state. That's why wisdom is supernal aspect, is a most marvelous reality of communion with him, but in a ceratin sense, you have to get your distance in order that it become love of people. I don't think that they're one and the same. And it’s a mysterious transition, one to the other. And in fact, the Zohar teaches that if chochmah and binah are not forever attached in loving embrace, then the world just collapses. Which is sort of what happens is a meditation that just leaves you in the being of what is, so you're out of the world. And in bliss with G-d. But if that is the consciousness of reality, then the world ends. That's literally what the Zohar says, they have to be tre reh d'lo mispar they have to be two lovers that hold themselves together. But in loving embrace, so the blissful connection with G-d and the joyous mother of children, they create a world in which the emotive qualities of the planet, which you experience in your emotions, the emotive qualities of the cosmos, again, which reverberate through you in your emotions, they become the devotion to G-d in all of His goodness, in all of His life-sourcing reality. In Kabbalah this is called the z'er anpin. The yichud of the miniature face, which means that there is an experience in all of life in miniature, which you get in your emotional experience. The large face, the arich anpin, is the consciousness of mentalities, the condition of the attachment with him, everything is there, but it's not in an emotive reality. But when it comes down in to the world of midot, by which I mean your love, fear, beauty, ability to overcome challenge, and desire to acquiesce and give thanks, and your connectedness to life, those are the six primary traits. So when all of those are in rapture with G-d, and unified towards Him this is what's called yichud hailahah, this is one of the aspects of higher unification. Which comes by virtue of the relationship between wisdom and understnading, chochmah and binah. This is what's born of that when that consciousness is right. And it will produce a love both of G-d and of all of the disparate aspects of reality. But that finally comes to expression in the malchut when I'm holding it all here, down here. I'm holding it all. It's not about my emotive integration into my devotion to G-d, I'm outwardly turned towards that which is and in love with it and participating together in this great unity. That's the lev tov. That's a good heart. You can have a heart, but it's not a good heart unless it's a connective heart .
Remember, we learned about lev tov as being the aspect of connecting out. I don't know exactly I can answer the question in a succinct fashion. We can say stuff. What you say is true. A loving person is a joyous person, a joyous person is a loving person, but they are not one and the same. They might be different things. One seems to birth the other. And what it sounds like is that the joy is what births the love. The joy having to do with the consciousness of ma'ayan, of life in its goodness of flow, I am attached to and have flowing through me.
(In couples work literature, I know studies have been done that couples that have four pleasurable experiences together to every one bad experience together are couples that thrive, as opposed to couples that have three or two pleasurable experiences as opposed to every bad experience together. There is some math that comes out. If you have this particular ratio of experiences together, then you will have a loving relationship, as opposed to if you have too many non-pleasurable experiences together, then love kind of fades out of the relationship.)
They have actually made it into a statistic. But it's pleasure. It's interesting to look at the numerology. Love is generated by pleasure. It doesn't have to be. We have to be careful because we are so used to translating pleasure into some selfish activity. But that's not what we're talking about. It's a communing experience by a joint and shared pleasure. That is what I would think is what generates the love. I mean, you might be a chaver tov by pleasure that your partner has given you. You might even be a shachen tov. Or you might have a relationship that is roeh et hanolad, you might be aware of the consequences, you might lose it. But none of those will in any way compare to what is the real love, which is the ma'ayan mitgabeir. It's not because of good neighborly relations we provide each other with what we need, like chaver tov, which might be more of an abstraction of that we feel a certain affinity to each other, or just on pragmatics of roeh et hanolad like, listen, if you don’t behave nice, she's going to walk out on you. That level, which also is generated by the pleasure of her company. What do you care whether he or she walks out on you? But the true consciousness in which it comes purely through you, which is the ma'ayan mitgabeir, which is, Life is coming through me and I'm together with you in it, and we're actually have one heart which is a good heart, beating life through all of us together. That's the deep knowing of the malchut, of someone who's not cholek kavod latzmo, it's not about my game, my honor, my ego—it's one heart that's beating for all. And then that's simchah, which is rooted in a communing oneg.
(It's that the difference between simchah and joy?)
That's the difference between pleasure and joy. Pleasure, like on Shabbat, is a blissful statis. Joy, which is on the moadim, on the hagim, is a joyous outburst and receiving of life and giving of life. That's why the Zohar says that anyone who has a meal on Yom Tov, where there aren't any poor or needy people at his table, is like he's eating the most distusting and decrepit thing. It doesn't say that about Shabbat, although we all like having guests on Shabbat. Everyone understands that if it's just Shabbat in the family, okay. Or even if it is Shabbat alone. There is something that's okay in that. But not about Yom Tov. Because simchah is the time, when it's like everyone dancing together. Simchah is the time when David HaMelech says, I don't care if I'm exposed. Adah rabah. V'nakolti ra mi zo. I'm looking to be completely exposed, in the sense that I don't want to have blocks that stand in the way of this ma'ayan mitgabeir being able to be mitgabeir and flow out. I don't want to have anything that will be moeah this from me. Chas v'chalom. What are you talking about, Michal, what do you think you're going to gain from that? Live a life in which you're closed in and completely oriented on providing for yourself? And making sure that your standing is an accomplished one? No one really talks that way when they're in joy. And therefore, no one except through that pathway will really come to love. So without the joy, the effulgence of life is not providing you with the sourcing for being one who is giving it over. Otherwise, you go into galus. The only way to not go into galus is by being in galut in that sense. Being outside.
(I have an exerise idea, if you want to do at some point. )
…
(Can you clarify the point you made about going into galus by being in galus?)
I want to express appreciation of your asking questions, first of all. Second of all, can I clarify that more? It's an image. There's a certain kind of a being at home in yourself, where the established boundaries of what you know and are familiar with are what you become very invested in protecting and preserving. Like I see this with people who have a lot of trouble getting married. I'm comfortable with who I am, they say. I don't know if that's such a good thing. What do you mean, You're comfortable with who you are? What does that mean in terms of where change is going to come from? And growth. Life is always hitting you with the demand to grow. And being mistapek, having satisfaction with what you have, of yesh li kol, has nothing to do with being in the way of growth. Nor does it have to do with being comfortable with who you are; that's shalvah. Shalvah is a very bad state. Because that kind of complacence, it leads to keeping the home comfortable. Because I’m comfortable with who I am. That's a nefesh habehamit talk. So what is, then, the right consciousness? You could be happy with what you have. That's already a far more dynamic kind of langauge. But I’m happy already with what I have. But that joyousness already indicates a dynamic energy, like I could have more, I could grow into—but that already means that you have to go into galus from the confines of the personhood of who you have established as and become comfortable with. That's what I mean going into galus.
(Going out.)
Yeah, going out. But if you don’t, then what happens is you become separated from the rest of life, because in becoming comfortable with what you are, you are unwilling and unable to accept what life keeps hitting you with, which is evolve, grow, this one's tough, there I am, here's someone else in your life, how are you going to deal with this? I'm comfortable with who I am, so I'm not going to deal with any of it. So that's the pnimi galus. That's an inner galus, in which you've separated and exiled yourself from the world. That's why the Rabbis say, ki nata v'an kavod, exile a person from the world, take you out of the world. What do you mean, Take you out of the world? There are very energetic and jealous people that I know and who seek their honor and are full of tyvah. They are really in the world. Those are the people really doing it, right? Those are the people that are in the world. The Rabbis say that's going to take you out of the world. What do you mean it takes you out of the world? What it means is that it's all about you, and your only interaction with the planet, is as one who is basically exiled from it. Because you don't really want to be living the life in connected with all, you only want to be providing yourself with the excitement and exhiliaration with the being that you're comfortable with. That stinks. You're totally out of the world. You may feel like you're totally alive, but you're totally out of the world. So you have to step out, go into the sukkah, loosen the boundaries and like welcome. So I said it in sort of like a paradox, because it's talking about two different kinds of galut, so it comes out as a paradoxical statements.
(You say go out of the boundaries, but the name that I was taught that was associated with Sukkah is Shakai. And isn't that davka a name of—)
I don't know. I was taught that it's the orot of ekyeh, so that would be different. Should get that one clearer. It's the ?? 1:11:54
(In terms of the going out in order to be able to come back in, I see in Sukkot the space of, after the yamim hanoraim, when we're really going inside, to see the habits or things that we really need to eke out and only a couple of years ago I started to understand and appreciate Sukkot I think because I could never walk back into my house and actually change. If after Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur I would have to go back into my dwelling place, I would be exactly the same. It's the ability to step out of that space and be told to sit. And when I sit, I sit with it, And after having those days to sit with it, I can walk back into my house and I'm totally changed. And it feels like, if I were not able to go into the Sukkah, we're going to get thrown out right away because we think we can hold it in our davening, but when we walk back into our house, we are too entrenched in it, so we need to break out of our space. So we have to embody it.)
(In Sukkot, we can be safe in our vulnerability so when we can go back in it feels good that we let go.)
(Chaya: I was wondering, what is this lev tov? When do I experience that? Looking at, when does my heart feel good, and thinking that we could try and deepen into that experience of lev tov, to try to identify it in our lives, and when do we really feel that, and then even to do a mediation to identify lev tov experience or feeling, and see if it's connected to acts or moments in my life when I can generate that lev tov, or when that happens, and to write out a list of those moments of lev tov, and then to have the kavanah that we're going to go into life, trying to do those things a little bit more. Or in particular, if you look at certain relationships, such as with my husband, what are the things that create a lev tov, and write them out and be committed to try and do more things that generate pleasure, not just getting by every day. Because so much of relationship is like, marriage is like you're just trying to get by, and I feel that one of the point that you're saying is, raise up our life experience to pleasure, joy and happiness as opposed to that shalvah or getting by.)
I'd like to do that. How's the rest of the room doing?
(A comment. I'm seeing how joy and love and this important concept of to avoid going into galus you have to experience it yourself. I see love as joy that's giving, sharing with some other entity, and to continue to get out of ourselves. It appears to me that the ultimate galus is become exiled from the rest of the world. You are separated, so You have forgotten how to share and love, how to give, you've cut yourself off. So in order to continue to remain in the path of giving and attaining joy from giving and giving from a place of joy, you must contniue to exercise to do what a little difficult or scary, which is the galus, in order to improve and to continue to love and connect.)
The transition point is letting go in trying, again, to hold on to what is comfortable and familiar and to risk by going out and giving. To take that risk. Your emphasis on giving is something that others share and it's important to recall it. And maybe in doing the work that Chaya is suggesting, so people will discover their points of maybe what am I thinking, what am feeling, what am I doing? In the realization of lev tov.
What's missing a little for me here, and maybe it's missing for other people, is that we haven't really given a hard and fast definition of what lev tov is. I'm just sharing the Maharal, so the assumption is clearly that it has to do with giving. The Maharal says that all these other people are giving, but with some kind of self-interest. This one is just giving life, he's the ma'ayan mitgaber, he's giving life, he's a heart pulsing for all. So, but somehow, it seems different than gemilut chesed, in which I’m doing a good turn for someone. Here we're really sharing a life source, and that's a different experience. We're "life-ing" together. So if that helps in clarifying, for me it like—yeah, so let's take five minutes to honor that, and when have I experienced that? I guess you're asking? When has it been like that for me? What does it look like when it's happening?
(Well, first off, what is my definition of a lev tov, let me consult my heart for a minute: okay, heart—)
When are you good?
(When are you good? When do you feel good? What is my personal experience of lev tov. And trying to identify experiences where I've touched that. So let's ask our hearts.)
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript:
Today is the yartzeit of the Alter Rebbe, the first Rebbe of Chabad, and being that he is someone I am very attached to, I want to share with you some of his writing in the contexts of what we've been learning-- which is a process of how G-d has filled out the elements of love of Him in the world through particular personalities, and viewing them through a transpersonal perspective, and seeing how the principles of love of G-d have become revealed and manifest in the world through the great teachers of it and the different aspects of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov (who then becomes Yisrael) and very particular attention we paid to the nature of the relationships of Yaakov to Rachel and Yisrael to Leah…
And last time we were in exploration in the particular way in which Leah has come to her own and became the mother of the malchut, of Yehudah, who in a process in which he became very aware of her particular and special gift, and how she knew, and named her subsequent children accordingly, she knew to take that to the right place, by virtue of both giving up on the insistance of it being for her, which became revealed through the way she…became very aware of it not being about her-- we didn't explore this much but she actually learned that from Rachel, perhaps we can go back to that … this principle of resignation, but not in the negative sense of it, but rather through the realization that it's not about her, and her revelation of her particular gift that is hers, is meant to come into the world dafka sometimes by letting go. And that kind of letting go is something which then achieved for her and accessed for her a different level of malchut, which is the ability to apply herself, or the machut's ability to apply herself in the world in any of the myriad and infinite circumstances and inerconnections and inter-relationships that come up by virtue of what happens.
I'll tell you what I mean in simple terms. A person who's discovered their special gift and then becomes closed in by it, and that can happen--it's all about me--the expression of it through me, everything then becomes servant for me, and the manifestation of what is me? all becomes quite disgusting, when people get there and they turn into these monstrous controllers of circumstances, of people, of realities in order that the me that they have discovered be able to become fully realized and fully manifest. These people strut around the world as if they are owners of the planet and controllers of other people, and really put themselves into reality from a position of it's what I have achieved, what I am meant to achieve, what I know my reality to be, and everything is here to serve it. That kind of a personal reality is extremely stagnated, domineering, and the opposite of what malchut is meant to be.
Because the reality that Leah births, through Yissaschar, is entirely different, it's the reality of knowing my special gift, and that gift is in full participation with the entire planet, and the circumstances and realities that I come across and face at every moment are there, not for me to control so that they can fit into some preconceived notion of what they have to be and what I've decided that I am and what will serve me, but it's the opposite. It's total surprise. Life is always taking you for a surprise. The things that come up and happen are not meant for you to control at all, but rather they are meant for you to be drawing from in order that the realization and the fullness of what your special reality is be able to come to expression in the fullest way. Sometimes even without it coming to realization without it being through you specifically.
And this is so crucial to know, as we saw that one of the great teachers of this is Hillel the Zakeyn, who is the same man who teaches us that the clal gadol b'Torah--that the great principal of the Torah--v'ahavta l'reecha c'mocha--is that you shall love your fellow as yourself.
And Hillel Hazakeyn is standing in the Beit HaMikdash in full joy at the Simchat Beit Shoevah… and he's saying the most spiritually horrifying thing --or one would take it that way if they had the wrong perspective and that is I'm ani kan hakol kan, if I am here, than everything is here. But what does that mean? If I am here everything is here sounds like it could mean, if I am here, nothing else matters. The only thing I care about is me and I'm here. So, everything is here. That would be a way to read Hillel's statement. But knowing that Hillel the Zakeyn is the man of v'ahavta l're'echa c'mocha, actually to listen to him carefully will give the opposite voice. Not that I am here and everything is here doesn't mean that I am here and nothing else matters, because if I'm here than everything that needs to be here is here, but the opposite. If I'm really here, I am present, then everything is here. Because when there is the person who is fully present to the reality of who they really are, and their ani, their selfhood, is clear, pronounced and expressed and joyous--we'll see how crucial that element of being joyous is--then that whole reality sings along with you, because it's all here with you at that moment and this is built upon a principal that we'll be B"H learning about today which is has to do with interconnectivity which is crucial for us to see.
So that I want to point out the root of that comes with Leah in her giving up, and Hillel indeed was one of the nasim of the Jewish people, a descendant of David HaMelech, so it's important to take a greater look at him as we look into greater clarity as to what David HaMelech is about and what the malchut is about. Because that's really what we've been working on ever since we've been exploring Leah, especially through hodaya, her realization of joyous thankfulness that she brought to the world on the birth of yehudah, who is, of course, the malchut. Yehudah comes with these two other children, because in the machaneh, in the midbar, Yehudah who stands on the east side, which is our forward in our four directions, Yehudah has to his right, Yissaschar, and he has to his left, Zevulun. And these are the elements that make right malchut. It's not like Yissaschar and Zevulun belong to some other camp. They exactly belong with malchut.
So when you go back to Hillel dancing there in the Beit HaMikash, in the joyous Simchat Beit Shoevah, and he's the child of David HaMelech, so we're going to see some very profound things that have to do with the elements of Yehudah and the elements of malchut especially as they relate to love, because it's Hillel HaZakeyn, and it's v'ahavta l'reacha c'mcocha, so when he says, ani kan v'kol kan, I believe he's coming from the realization of selfhood that knows that there is no way that anything in the world could be left out of the full realization of my selfhood, and the reason for that is very clear, because the entire world exists by virtue of the interconnectivity of all of its elements. You cannot ever exist as some independent, atomic particle which is not in relation to everything else.
Now they talk about in physics about the butterfly effect, or the chaos principles or all kinds of aspects of reality which now even as I'm moving my hand here better be careful, because I might be setting off some kind of tycoon ("typhoon" --DG) in Malaysia or something and that's the truth, the incredible interconnectness of things means that but it also means that there's nothing in reality that's really irrelevant with the nature of who you really are if you're in tune with who you are. If you're missing it, so then your environment is smaller and smaller, but if you're really fully expressing what the world is meant to be expressing through you, well, the world is really meant to be expressing it through you and you're not alone. That’s one of the most beautiful realizations, is that you're never alone, when you're alone, when you're really alone because when you're really alone, meaning, when you become really unique, and really purposeful, really on target, on the mark, this was the deep teaching about Yaakov being left alone.
The lvado of Yaakov, where G-d was willing to say, or he was willing to say, ani eloka batachtonim, which Rashi told us, and according to the Ramban, that the Shechinah lives in Eretz Yisrael. Meaning that the Shechinah lives in the place which, by its nature, is connected to the entire planet because it is the place that the entire planet began from. It is the place in that first relationship with G-d, and so, when he is fully realized into that, then he is touching everything. The Malchut expresses that from the vantage point of me. Very aware of himself being there, im ani kan hakol kan, it can't be that there'd be anything that's left out of this great moment of me being here in full joy. Again, as we'll see the element of joy is crucial. I believe of that aspect of the malchut of I'm connected to all and it's not about me, comes as born through Leah's resignation and giving up, coming through her body and sending in a shifcha, which we saw, she declares, it's true Yaakov that I hired you, sachor scharitcha for the dudaim, but I want to tell you something, this child who is called Yisasschar, was born not because I bought you, but because I dafka gave you up as the one who would sleep with me in this personal and specific embodied manifestation. I gave you up for the higher purpose in which we're both joined together, which is bringing in the shvatim, bringing these children into the world, aym ha banim smaycha, joyous even in the sense, when the child comes through some other body, joyous in that. She's attached to that, that's her true and deep attachments, as the mother of the children.
And so in giving up Yaakov, ironically, she buys him to sleep with him that night, but in buying him, she achieves the sachar, the reward, which is is only achievable for those who are willing to give it up for their particular and specific manifestation. And that rewrad is the reward of a child who will then become the paradigm for a Talmid chacham.
You see, Yissachar, the pasuk in Divrei Yamim says, that benei Yissachar, (14:44) yodeh binah l'iteem. The children of Yissachar are the ones who know binah in its timeliness. They know exactly what's to come in time. They were big talmidei chachmim. And the specific aspect they had was yodei binah, which is, of course, Leah, the aym habanim smecha. The power to creatively and joyously bring new realities into the world, l'iti, according to the right time. And this is so crucial. That's a specific pasuk in Divrei Ha yamim. I don't have the perek, I'm sorry. In Chronicles. They were big as rashei sanhedrin, there were two hundred of them, from that tribe, that tribe was big. And the specific aspect of Talmid Chachamim that they had was yadei binah, which is of course Leah, the aym ha banim smechah, the power to creatively and joyously bring new realities into the world, l'itim. at the right time. Because a real talmid chacham will always speak the voice of the present. They are the only ones who can really poskin halachah and teach Torah. They're the ones who know what the times, so to speak, call for. And that's because they have resigned their previous preceptions and preconceived notions and insistance on coming through me as I have formed myself and as I know myself to have become, and they are able to live with the openness to what reality is bringing, what this present moment in life is calling forth, and only those of that profound sense of the mutual nature of creative expression, meaning: it's not me and my teaching, nor is it a reality that is solidified and become standardized and set, but there is something that is born between the contact of the two of us, which is a mutual creation by virtue of the interrelationship between us. That's true Torah she b'al eh, which is not one or the other; it's the most beautiful relationship between G-d's revealed word and the meaning of the time and the moment and the particular personhood of the talmid chacham who speaking it.
That's what it is, Like it or not. You won't like it if what you're looking for is the set-in-stone absolute truths. You won't like it if you're afraid of changes in dynamic which means that it's not absolute. But you'll love it if what you're in love with is relationship. Because that means it's always being made anew and fresh at every moment. So the people who become the greatest talmidei chachmim are the ones who are descended from Leah's being resigned about it being from her particular body. And then that sachar comes, being first and foremost the great teachers of Torah, but the truth is, more deeply, being the very possibility of being sachar and reward. In the true spiritual sense, where I'm not getting the reward for this particular form that I'm formed in but I'm participating in divine reward, which means it's beyond the particular boundaries of myself.
Here's something from a student of the Admor HaZakeyn's son. The great pleasure of sachar, of reward, when it comes to the physical life, so the more body-bound you become, and the more particular that you become, so the more pleasure there is in the reward. But when it comes to spiritual rewards it's exactly the opposite. The less you are attached to and insisting upon your own particular boundaries, so the more you can experience the joy and the pleasure of G-d's presence, and it's ironic, because He wants you in your specificity. But He only wants us in our specificity, inasmuch as we recognize that it's not about us. That we are giving it up to He who is greater than us, then the pleasure is very great. That's the yesh sachar, Yissaschar, and it comes down again into how these people interact with reality.
Here's a story about someone named Shimon Hamsuni. Had a chop--he realized something. What he realized was that every time that it says et in the Torah, that it comes to include something else. Bereshit barah elokim, et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz. Must be coming to include something else, kol et she b'torah he darshaned, What does the et mean? He built up a whole insitute, he was there with talmidim, and they were darshaning every et in the Torah and they had this wild Guinness thing going, and they get to a pasuk--et Hashem elokecha, Tirah, you are to stand in fear of G-d, you are completely batel to G-d, which ultimately is an experience of that there is nothing else but G-d, completely abnegated before Him that is ultimate and complete and perfect fear. Not fear in the sense of being afraid, but in the sense of utter awe. So they get to the pasuk and they can't figure out what to do with that. Along with G-d, you should also fear what? You are going to compare something with G-d, especially when it comes to tirah, when you should be completely abnegated before G-d, now what do we do? So they get revved up, what are you going to do? Nobody's got anything, so he gets up in front of his tzibur, and he says, k'shem shkibalti schar al ha drishot, kach kibalti schar al hadrisha. (22:38) The way I received sachar for my darshaning all these, in the same way now, I receive sahcar from my absolving and my pulling back from darshaning. Meaning, okay, it didn't work out. It means, he's let go of the pre-conceived reality that he's built of what his life is about and what it's for. He's hit something now. Everything would have turned into a lie, if he can't darshan this one, like the whole thing is gone. Well, if it's about me getting my thing out into the world, then man, he's going to fight hard, but if it's about me and my devotion and love of G-d, and whatever He brings me is the reflection and the dynamic interraction that I'm meant to have now, that calls me forth, what is being called forth now, and what is always being called forth. It wasn't me and my mosdos, my institutions, me and my expressions, me and my word that I'm coming about, no, it wasn't about that. It was about me and my devotion to truth, to G-d, and so, the same sachar, that I got for all the great drashas that I made, I get for this. It's really the same thing.
So then the Gemara goes on and says, until Rebbe Akiva came along, and he said….et Hashem elokecha tira, lrabo talmidei chachamim. Et Hashem elokecha tira comes to include talmidei chachmim. Hey, where was Rebbe Akiva until now? How come he didn't speak up? You know what happened? When he saw Hamsuni, he saw it would be possible that there would be someone who lives the presence of G-d so much that it is a reality which is formed by the nature of the relationship that he has with G-d and the truths that now become revealed by the dynamic of his interaction with G-d's being, with G-d's teaching. It was like, Hamsuni became the revelation of the one who was, so to speak, godlike in his not being about his small self, but his being about the revelation of the truth of all. Not about my particular project. But if it's the truth that's meant to come through right now, like the et thing doesn't work, okay, that's a different kind of a personality, it's surrender to the greater being of G-d, Who continues to speak through me, but not necessarily in a way that I expected. Ah, that's Rabbi Akiva, that's a talmid chacham. That's a ben Yissachar.
I personally long for talmidei chachamim like that who are real in that. Because so much today is about… rebuilding what was, or holding on to the world we once knew… Yeshivas get named for European [towns?] that have long been destroyed as if somehow we're doing them a favor by continuing to do what they did. When the honest truth is, no one's really doing what they did anymore. Maybe they're not doing what they did, it's not even true, but somehow people think the comfort in their thinking that they do. But that comfort in thinking you're doing what they did, also stifles your ability to be l'itim, to be those who know the times and live them in a full connectivity to what is right now. It's as if those people--and excuse me for holding forth on this--,it's almost if they've given up on G-d, as if G-d stopped producing sometime, it's no longer the bechina of aym habanim smecha it's all about shorring up, holding on, lhitchazek, be strong, we'll make it through, okay, it's true, we have to be strong because there's a lot of lies in the world, but if all you are is being mitchazak, if all you are is being strong, you're going to miss all the truths too, which are meant to be born in this moment. Those are the true talmidei chachamim, those who so to speak resigned their bodies, and resigned their attempt to just be comfortable with and shorr up what they already know and what has already been.
See, I believe this is what is meant by a dirah batachtonim, making a dwelling place for G-d in the lower worlds. Everything that my great teacher, the Baal Hatanya teaches about how that's coming to know the unity in life and the unity of all that is, and seeing G-d's presence in all of reality and knowing that it's all Him. It's all true about dirah batachtonim, but there is another aspect of dirah batachtonim and that is that we're home together, so to speak. What I mean by that is, you can have two parents and have a great relationship between them, but there's something else, that is called the home. The home isn't one or the other person, and if you particle it out into all the different children and the two parents and the pet dog and the chairs and the tables and, if you particle it all out, so it's not a home, it's not a bayit. That's all the different pieces of a picture, but only when they've been joined together does the picture emerge. And the picture that emerges is a home. It is one of the best examples of what we mean when we talk about a malchut. It's a picture which is not the particular pieces, but it's a whole, and by virtue of the interconnectness between them produce something that is not the particluar specifics of the picture.
It's like looking at a picture. And in fact, one of the names for malchut in the Kabbalah is temunah, a picture. A picture is not a picture once you stop picking apart the different elements that are in it. It stops being a picture. Like, this chair, if I starting taking apart all the pieces of the chair, there wouldn't be any chair left. I'd still have all the parts of the chair are still here, right? Here they are on the floor, it's collapsed. But where did the chair go? It's all right there. Put it on the scale, you'll see it, it's got exactly the same weight it did when you were sitting on it. Where did the chair go? Well, we'll put it back together, you'll have the chiar again. What did you add? We didn't add anything at all. Nothing at all. Except one thing. Connectedness. Which now makes a picture.
That's the way Torah shb'al peh is also. Connectedness, which now makes a picture. It's not G-d's teaching or my teaching There's a consciousness of mine and of what G-d is teaching that have met at a particular moment of an everchanging reality and that's the bayit right now, that's the dirah batachtonim. He is mamash living here, He is the dirah batachtonim. How? With us. When we have the consciousness of the talmid chacham who, the Rabbis say, …who are the real kings? They have the talmidei chachamim, but in the true sense. About who those people are. That's because they are true beni chorim, truly liberated. Actually live a holy reality. That's what it means in Hebrew. Bnei chorim. Hor, that's whole, Beni chorin is liberated people. H-o-l-l-y, or however you spell it, I guess. H-o-l-e-y? (No, h-o-l-y) When you're full of holes too, the reason why the bnei chorin are holey, is because they are always seeing reality as an endless series of opportunities for the expression of what G-d has gifted them with. Always with the conception and the knowing that this is not about me expressing what I've been gifted with, but this is about bringing the realization of the planet to its fullness, which is the will of G-d, we're building this together, G-d, and we can really do that by being open to what the ate is, what is this particular time is right now. Those are the talmidei chachmim who come from the Yisasschar, the kings, that's the malchut, that's making a dirah batachtomin. That's why, by the way, the name Zevulun means, we've made a beit dirah, and that Leah's final gift, so to speak, to the children of Yaakov, and her final gift to the building of malchut, Zevulun, who will now stand on the left side of Yehudah in the camp. It's a bayit. It's a dirah batachtonim for you G-d . That's what my life is. That is full love. Because I'm not giving up a particular refraction that the selfhood that you've given me brings and (starting to speak with more passion) I'm certainly not giving you up. I'm knowing that it's You refracting through me. I'm knowing that what's happening right now and is going on right now is something which is really here, that it wouldn't be right to talk about me or You it's just what is in the fullness of that.
The most amazing thing is that the word makom, in the gematria of yud times yud and heh times heh and vav times vav and heh times heh equals the gematria of makom, of place. It's like when the two sides meet. The havaha in you and the havaha coming from G-d meet and form this place. That's the dirah batachtonim that G-d is longing for. And it can only come from a true unity consciousness. All the levels of the consciousness that we've been through from Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, can only come about by virtue of all of those elements being present within in, to allow you to be here in a way which is b'tikkun and not a violation of the knowing of His oneness. But rather about a realization of the one G-d where all of reality are participant in His being, ki v'yachol, (37:22) to manifestation.
So Leah says a most amazing thing when she calls Zevulun, Zevulun. She says, G-d has given me zeh vtov, he gave me a good chelek. So I'm going to call him Zevulun. Why didn't you call him Zvudun, besides the fact that it's hard to pronounce. It sounds like voodoo. The point is, her chelek is what she's grateful for. That's her hodaya. But now she's come through Yissaschar, so it produces a beit dirah, a home, a malchut.
(Question: What is malchut?) Kingdom. We're used to kingdom being a place where a king reigns, but there is a deepr aspect to kingdom which is that kingdom is when all of the different, disparate and separate parts are joined together into something which they make which is more than just themselves. So that all the parts of this chair when they are together, are a kingdom. It's an abstraction, right? When they are together, they are a kingdom. Like a personality, when it's like all over the place, is not, but when there is an organisation of the personality of, I'm pulling it all together, then the kingdom has arrived. So the beautiful thing is, there a kingdom called knesset yisrael, which is the kingdom of us with G-d in an embrace in which we become one. And that is what we've been talking about.
And that embrace is the very first embrace which is on top of the aron habrit. At the very beginning, if you remember, that is the source of Creation. The point on the planet which is where G-d began the creation from, the navel of the earth, which is the place of the kodesh kodashim. On that place are two keruvim, angels that are in an embrace in the Beit Hamikdash, in the Temple. Because the origin of it all is that (inaudible-41:10) in the embrace. But now what's happened, at the end of time, so to speak, or the end of the series, at David, or at the malchut, it's not so much about them being in the embrace, it's what the Baal HaTanya calls a kiss, they become the one breath. A oneness that's achieved by the breath of the two which now forms into a new word.
That's by the way, the word malchut divides in Hebrew into milat kaf vav. The word that has the numerical value of twenty-six, which is G-d's name, yud-key-vav-hey. Besides being beautiful, it's the very expression of what the malchut is. Because the malchut is the difference between a bunch of a letters and a word. Now go pick that word apart into its pieces. Put the alef over there and the gimel over there, and put the vav over there. What do you end up with? Not a word. It's a malchut when it's a word. The way in which G-d creates which is by forming the words which reality draws from, is in itself an expression of what the nature of reality is. Which is none of this can exist of its connection in relationship with everything else. That's why He creates with words. The word itself is an expression of what the nature of our connectivity is, that's the grounding of it. It's connectivity. It's all malchut. And when we speak G-d's word in our lives, in our deeds and thoughts, and especially in our deeds,.
So take a look here at this piece from the Tanya, chapter thirty-five. …I want to explain to you what G-d said in the Chumash that here, I've given you this Torah, which is very near you,… in your mouth and in your heart to do it. So he talks a lot in this book about in your mouth, and he talks about in your heart, but what's the doing it? I also want to tell you about something called , as he says, people who are beinoni. These are people who are in a constant struggle and fight and never fully achieve the overcoming of their other side, their yetzer harah, and they might think that they are living in a world that is empty of success, and they might even be despairing of achieving what it is they're going for, which is some kind of purity that their soul is yearning for, and everytime, every day it seems like they're starting again. Pick yourself up, get yourself happy, deal with it, and another yetzer, oh yeah, I blew it, I did it again, I spoke lashon harah, … what's going on? I thought I was beyond this. No, the beinoni is all the time being knocked back, knocked down, struggling, and he would have a sense that it's all… empty effort. So I want to tell you something, he says, … let this be their consolation… and give them great joy in G-d who is dwelling with them in their Torah and in their avodah. And it comes from a teaching in the Zohar. A wise man, his eyes are in his head. So the Zohar says, big deal? The stupid people have eyes in their feet? Of course the wise man has eyes in his head. Where are the eyes of a person? No, no, I'll tell you. I'm actually teaching you a pasuk. That it says, that a man, a human being, always has the Shechinah over his head, and a wise man keeps his eyes on the Shechinah. Because there is a flame which is burning over the head of each one of us, and it needs oil to keep burning. Your body, that's a wick. And the flame over your head, that's the Shechinah. And Shlomo the King said, … Don't ever run out of oil on your head, because the light on your head will go out if you don't continue to feed it oil . And what is the oil of the light on your head? Those are the good deeds you do on this earth. And so it says, the wise man keeps his eyes on his head. So I'll tell you what this means, he says. This is a parable. The parable is that the light is the Shechinah and it's compared to a candle light which can only continue to burn as long as it's burning out from the body of the wick that it's attached to. As soon as it would disconnect from the wick, it would go out. As soon as there would be no oil in the wick, it would burn it and become extinguished. So, too, the Shechinah can only dwell on the body of a person who is, of course, compared to the wick. And how? Only by feeding the flame through his ma'asim tovim, by his good acts. Dafka.
I want to tell you something. He says, it's not enough the meditation, which he says in his book. It's not enough that in his neshama that he knows that he's a part of G-d and he experiences that in his meditation. Because at the end of the day, as big a tzaddik as you might become, and as much as you might be serving G-d with love and awe which is the most pleasurable experience which a human being can possibly touch, nevertheless, you can never become completely batel in His reality to become completely at one and absorbed into the light of G-d mamash, to become at one and fully unified and in communion with Him, in a perfect and utter communion, because you always remain something. You are the one who is fearing and loving Him. Then who would be fearing and loving Him if you were completely at one with Him? That also would be an extinguishing of the Shechinah. Because the Shechinah is the reality which is formed by the virtue of the kiss that is between us and Him, the reality of our being together. …As opposed to a mitzvah or ma'asim tovim, the mitzvot and the good deeds, that are the accomplishment of His will. And His will, that's the source of life of all the worlds that are created.
Now all these worlds came about by virtue of G-d's having contracted His light, of his having hid His face, of this higher presence in infinite presence of Him so that they could be created, something from nothing, experiencing themselves as being different from Him by being rewarded a consciousness which blocks seeing Him and which allows you to see things as being separate entities, such that things would lose their reality and would be able to be extent as separate existences. So that's how we got to this world.
Now let me tell you something. This is so important: the depth of the connection to Him is deep when one does one little act, one little deed on this planet. Because then, in a meditative condition of full and complete communion with Him, you may be experiencing a pleasure of being in full and complete communion with Him, but you're not in full and complete communion with Him, because if you were, you wouldn't be experiencing being in full and complete union with Him. And then if you let go of that, then you're gone. But He's wanting you to be here. That would be a violation of His wanting you here. So you're going to lose yourself?
So, as he explained to us, as big a tzaddik you are and as profound person you live in the comtemplation of your soul in the presence of G-d and the greatness of G-d, and the great exhiliarated ecstasy that might come with that, that is not ultimate connection. Dafka, the connection that can be experienced far more deeply is by doing one small act which is an expression of His desire. See how he explains it: The mitzvot, that's the depth of his desire. He doesn't have to hide his face there. The life force that's in doing His will, that's not something other than Him, that's Him. Which now you're aligned with and you're participating with the manifestation of bringing into expression of. It's completely at one with Him. And then in that act, you become completely at one with Him. In there and in that act.
It might sound funny. I've been married twenty-five years. By the way, I was really guided. My wife's birthday is today, the Alter Rebbe's yarzeit. Something going on there, huh? I want to tell you something, I'll try to keep it clean. But I can tell you, as much as we might think together, as much as we might talk together, or tell each other how much we love each other, as much as we touch, as much as there is all of that, there is nothing as great as one act which we do together as an expression of a joined will. And you know, it may even be taking out the garbage. That's a deep thing taking out the garbage. That really is. This is a joke, but Zevulun also means the garbage dump. That's the truth, The garbage dump, this world. Putting that aside. Because like, how much could I tell her that I love her? How many words would I be able to say? How many songs could I sing? As soon as I stop, it's going to become like, is that all? Because it's infinite and ongoing. It's not something you can describe. We say to G-d, dor l'dor yishabach ma'asecha, from generation to generation. Which, by the way, is dwell and dwell, dor l'dor, dirah to dirah, generation to generation, we keep saying it and we keep saying it. How much could we possibly say it? When are you going to stop saying it?
But you know what you can do with someone that you love? What happens when you just give a kiss? Have you said it all? You know what? You said it all. You know why? Because it's all right there in that moment and in that act. You think you're going to start spelling it out? Okay, good luck. What did you mean by that kiss, honey? Could you explain that to me? I'll try, but I think it might take me twenty-five years and more. It's every moment of our lives, it's everything that we're here for, it's everything in our connectedness that was in that. It's where our love for each other joined and merged into one and when it's with G-d, it's when His will became manifest through me and I gave it to Him through my act, that one touch, which is called a mitzvah.
I've been teaching this book and the Tanya really is a manual for meditation for those of you who have been looking for it. Here it is, of Jewish Meditation, he tells us here in perek lamed heeh, it's big and it's crucial. And it is because, you wouldn't want to kiss a person mindlessly, and so be fully connected and real with it. But the only thing that ever could possibly express in a way that you become one with is yishakeni mnishikut pihu. Kiss me from the kisses of your mouth, which is what knesset yisrael says to G-d. Ki tovim dodecha m'yayinn, because your love is greater than the wine of your written torah, and Chazal learn that verse as oral torah, that's the kiss of your mouth, that's what we're making together, that's the acts that we realize are meant to be done now, and ultimately by the doing of them. It's in the mind, and it becomes most profoundly in the deed. That's why dodecha, which means "your lovings" is the same letters as David, which is your lovings. Because David is the end point, the malchut, and David is also the deed.
(1:00:52) "V'ineh…" So the Scheninah, which is the revelation of his divinity, and the light of the infinite one, v'ezeh davar…it's in one thing, that is to say, that that thing has become participant in the light of G-d, batel in his body, that's why he has his dirah in the tachtonim, by that which is not completely given over to him. The light of G-d does not dwell upon it. And even the Tzaddik gamur is completely cleaving to G-d with a great love, and intense love, well, ultimately, his meditation, his thought cannot hold him, because the truth of G-d is that He is the full truth and His unity of being alone is that there is no other than Him.
So this lover, who is still in yesh, and not known and trying to grasp Him can not, it only happens through his deed. Listen to this: Rambam tells us about David. David is deed-doer, and the end point of the dudaim, the davidaim, and it’s the end point of the dodim. Ki tovim dedecha mi yayin. And he tells us about it in the context of what happens when people are dancing in the Beit Hamikdash at the simchat beit hashoevah. Remember Hillel the Zakayn, im ani kan, hakol kan? So listen to how the Rambam describes what happens there. He says, the real people to dance there? (Laughing). The real people to dance there? The real ones dancing, they're the talmidei chachamim. They are the roshei yeshiva, the sanhedrin, chachmei yisrael, chassidim, z'keynim, anshei ma'aseh, the ones who know how to do. They are the ones who are fully dancing there. Then he goes on and says the following. He says, Let me teach you about simchah, about joy, because that's what Sukkot was. By the way, sukkah is kneged binah. Hasimchah she yismach ha adam b'asiyat ha mitzvah, the simchah that a person has a joy with when he's doing a mitzvah, and the love of G-d who commanded it avodah g'dolah hih, that's a big avodah. That's big work. What's the big work? He's going to tell you. …. Anyone who prevents himself from this simchah deserves to have judgement executed on him. Now listen to his choice of words. Anyone who prevents himself from the mitzvah, it's appropriate that he be nichrah from him. You see, in Hebrew, it's a funny thing, you know? Pharoah, is in the kabbalah, the stand off of real malchut. Pharoah, in Hebrew, Para, means to separate, paruah, wild, and basically unconnected, priah is when two things are pulled apart. Lhiparah mimenu, this guy's like a Pharoah-type, but putting that aside, you can take that as a drash or as a true insight. Listen to the Rambam in the way he says it. You know what the big avodah in simchah is? Let me tell you. The big avodah in simchah is don't stop yourself from being happy. That's what he says. He says there's a big avodah here. In doing the mitzvah and in loving G-d. Where did the love come from? Who's talking about love? Is the Rambam getting romantic? The great thing about the Rambam is, don’t suspect him of that. The Rambam is extremely clear and precise. Why did he throw in love? The simchah of Simchat Beit Hashoevah is about dancing and joy, right? . Usmachtem b'chagecha vahitah ach sameach. Where did the Rambam pull in love from? And then he says, the G-d who commanded you to do this is a-- Excuse me, the great joy in doing the commandments that G-d has commanded you, it's a big avodah! I'll tell you what the avodah is, (1:07:33)…if you stop yourself from the simchah, then you deserve to be punished, nifrah, and cut off. That's the punishment. How do we know? The verse says so. The Chumash says in chapter twenty-eight of Devarim. You're going to be exiled from this land if you don't do G-d's work b'simcha uv'tov leva. What does that mean? To do it with joy and to do it with a good heart. A good heart. Maybe the Rambam learned love from a good heart. Simchah and tuv levav. Simchah and love. Love is the full heart. Love is the experience of abundance of what is. Love is the connectivity of seeing the good as we've learned, and joining with it. If you cut yourself off from that, then you deserve to be cut off and you deserve to go into exile. It's all the same thing. It's like an oxymoron. Meaning, that by definition, to stop yourslef from being happy means to cut yourself off. Because when you're attached to life in fullness, you're in full joy. That's just the way it works. Want to know where to see it? Look at the children. Full of zest, full of joy. Until they start getting self-conscious and start worrying about their honor. Start worrying about the impression they're making. Or the image they're trying to project or the external realization that they are convince that they ought to be and all that stuff, man, should be/ought to/connect to life. The Rambam is saying, If you stop yourself-- that's the big avodah people. Don't be moneah yourself. Bah! Well, he tells you what it looks like. …..(1:10:13) a Person who becomes totally bloated or self-conscious or self-involved, neges daatoh. Full in his thinking…cholek kavod l'atzmo--an amazing term--and he divides out honor to himself. He's like taking his piece he's out of the ani kan hakol kan. It's my piece, it's my territory. It's what I am and what I'm supposed to be-- take me as I am. And needs to protect himself that life shouldn't just flow him Gee, if life flows through me, then where am I in all this? cholek kavod l'atzmo. Seeking for the honor of his delimited self. You know who he is?....And he's creating honor for himself in his own eyes, total self-consciousness,. He is a sinner, he is a fool. The sinner I think is kneged simchah, because choteh means he's off, missing the mark, out of alignment and shoteh is kneged love. He's a fool. Isn't there a phrase, only fools fall in love? Something like that? The truth is only fools don't. Because the fool is so caught up in what his own heart is thinking he's holding in his shrirut libo. In the meanderance of his own inner life, that he's become disconnected from realty. Those are the people who fall out of love, the ones who disconnect from reality-- they fall out of love. That's what it means to fall out of love. That's what literally in Hebrew is shoteh. Someone who's shot. Although in English it sounds pretty good too. But in Hebrew shat means "to float above it." Like la shoot al hamayim. What is that? You're disconnected. Lost the tuv lev, the connecting heart. Ah. ….. (1:13) About this Shlomo said, don’t make yourself into big stuff in front of the king, don't bloat yourself in front of the king G-d, the real king in real kingship. The Rambam completes this by saying the following…when there's a joyous celebration of G-d's work in the world, of life, the ones who lower themselves, who lower their honor. …And forget about their body, in these times, in these places, he's the great and honored one who's worshipping G-d out of love. I'm having trouble. Love, joy, which one is it? Do you know, the simple gematria of simchah is shen echad. Or sham echad. Or sam echad. Any one of them. Het hay is the gematria of one, which of course is the gematria of love. And that's what happens when you're really connected with life. It's joyously running through you. You're creative, you're connected, you're in, you're happy, you're feeling the fullness of all that is. You're in love. And when you're in love, that's what you experience. It didn't have to be that way. You didn't have to be happy when you're in love. But people are.
And then he ends this whole section with--guess who? With David. B'chen David melech yisrael amar… This is what David said when he was dancing his way up to the Beit Hamikdash. He said, "I'm willing to make myself even cheap even than this." He was dancing around, it's a whole story to look at, he was kicking it up, his robe is like flying and going total berzerk. It's like, wow! Unbelievable scene going on. The king of Israel is dancing around the aron habris that's going up to the Beit Hamikdash, and he's losing it! So then he comes home. And the whole time his wife's been watching him. And his wife is the daughter of Shaul, who's a different kind of king, whom we cannot explore right now. Her name is Michal, which is kelim. She's holding things in the vessels. She doesn't want too much light in the vessels. It's like getting out of hand. So she's watching him dancing and she comes to him and says, that's disgusting! You've done shame to all of us, dancing that way. All the shifchas can see you. Ding. Shifchas? Hmm.What's going on with all the shifchas anyway? All the shifchas can see you. I don’t know what she was thinking. But it had to do with "a little more decorum please. Your tie got disheveled, David." So, David says to her, the verse the Rambam here quotes: Don't worry about me, I'm ready to make it even worse (inaud) myself even lower than what you've seen. Then the story ends by saying, and Michal never had children. That's sad, but what's it got to do with this? It's got everything to do with this. You can't have children unless you have the child-like. It's the truth. Really, by the way of zivug, by way of kissing and connection. If you don't have the child-like, relations are called in Hebrew "to play around." Isn't that funny, that we should have children by playing around? L'sachek? What are we laughing about? Shouldn't having children be a serious matter? When peep come in with their ties and jackets, and he's with his tie and jacket and she's with, what's going on here? It's absolutely infantile. That's what it is. These peep are losing themselves. We shouldn't be losing ourselves. But children are born by couples losing themselves and playing. Imagine being overly careful. That's not the way halachah has it. All kinds of things have developed over the centuries, but that's not the way of the Talmud. They're playing aounrd. Sha'ashuah. Strange. But that's exactly it. The joy of life is expressed in that moment, and its so in the moment. And only then can a child be born. There's even a Rashi in Masechet Niddah that says--no, I'll put that one aside. So, of course she didn't have children. Nor really can Torah she b'al peh be born of anything else. If it's all stuck up, then it's not going to be real to the moment. Nor can a life with G-d be with anything else. People have it wrong. The love of G-d, this is exacly what the Rambam is describing here, it's David HaMelech dancing mfazez umfarker. He's dancing, it's beautiful in its joyousness and playful. Sha'ashuah, creative. That's not to say there's no rules, of course there are rules. That's not to say there aren't kelim. Of course there are kelim. It's just to say what mood is meant to be. And so the Rambam has taken us mamash full circle, because Avraham is where it began, the great lover of G-d, and Daivd is where it ends, the great lover of G-d in joy. Because by Avraham it's not in joy because it's not in the world, so to speak. But in David it's in the beautiful creative act, living here, in this world with G-d, in love with Him, that it all comes to realization and expression. So the Rambam, these halachot, ends with this quote: 1:22:57, There is no greatness, and there is no honor, except to be in joy before G-d, as it says, ….vhamelech david mfazaz umfarker, lifneh Hashem. king David he was "living it up." In front of G-d.
(Questions): Sof hilchot lulav. Maytal said, what act? And there's lots of acts, mitzvot. First I want to say, Taryag, six-hundred and thirteen, which is the number of mitzvot, is the gematria of "love connection" Tav Reish, six-hundred is kesher, yud gimel, is thirteen, love. Love connection. And it's also one connection. Putting that aside. The Rambam writes, and not everyone agrees with the Rambam. In this the Maharal takes very strong issue with him and I've got to be careful today because the Maharal is the great-great-grandfather of the Baal ha Tanya. But the Rambam says, the reason why there are so many mitzvot, is just so you can get just one right. (Laughter) You don't have to say that, but it's interesting in the context of what we've been learning today.
But between us, I don't think it's quite that way. Life is long. Circumstances shift. There's all kinds of possibilities that life is offering and it's not just so to speak, taking the garbage out. There are many other things that we do for each other that are these miniscule expressions of endless love. And so it's the same way also with the mitzvot. There are many aspects of our lives, what needs to be done, and there are many aspects of why G-d has commanded what it is that He has commanded for us to do. Such that there would be many of them.
But you know what? It all started out as one kiss, a miniscule kiss, and this is cosmologically so. The current cosmologists going theory, won a noble prize, that the Big Bang was not a vast energy source that everything grew out of. No. The Big Bang began with a microscopic spot of energy which within, and they found this with particle accelerators and readings from the cosmos etc. within a fraction of a second, ten to the seventy-third power, of a fraction of a second of a second. It moved from something you could barely see with a microscope, to everything there is. That was the Big Bang. They can't quite chop where that one came from, but they've gotten it down to that small. If that help anyone. But I'll tell you this is exactly a Ramban in the Chumash, that the world began as a nekudah k'tanah dakah she eyn bo mamash. That the world began as a small miniscule, delicate point that had nothing to it. That's exactly what the cosmologists have arrived. Nothing but a particle. If you can talk about particles. And the fact is, because you can't really talk about particles, that's why everything was right there. All of the energy of the universe was right there. It doesn't matter how big it is. Everything is right there. And this is the first kiss.
Repeating from above to remind us why: What happens when you just give a kiss? Have you said it all? You know what? You said it all. You know why? Because it's all right there in that moment and in that act… It's every moment of our lives, it's everything that we're here for, it's everything in our connectedness that was in that
[Because G-d, in a sense, couldn't have made the world. And the ba'al hatanya teaches this: G-d made the whole world out of one spot, because if it would be anything more than that it would be as if you were trying to contain all the love that G-d has for creation in "here's the whole thing." But when He creates it but not giving you the whole thing, but he creates it by giving you one little dot, so it's clear this is not by virtue by its dimensions, not meant to represent everything that I'm feeling and I'm wanting and desiring for this planet. It's like the one kiss.] Rework this entire idea.
So the whole world actually began with the one miniscule act. And all we do is so miniscule. If we would be all the way in outer space, you wouldn't be able to see me making Kiddush Friday night. It's like a miniscule point of nothingness. Does that mean something? I love it. It's like the Ramban and the cosmologists converge and they say, Well, you know, it's nothing just like the first point of Creation was nothing. It was also a miniscule, microscopic spot which contained everything in it. Yeah, this is wild stuff, the way these things have converged now. It's very exciting. Because we're getting very close.
This by the way, is an amazing Gemara that says: Once there was a Rabbi who was teaching. And he says, Tomorrow we're going to talk about our friend, Menashe. Now our "friend, Menashe" refers to King Menashe, who was an idol worshipper. So that night he had a dream and his friend, Menashe came to him, angry that he was so disrespectful of him. So Menashe said to him, "What do you think? If you had been in my times, you would have been picking up your skirttails to run in order to get to the avodah zarah to worship it. And by the way, do you know where you cut the bread from when you make motsei?" No, where? "From the place it bakes first." Then Menashe disapperas. He comes into the Beis Hamidrash the next morning, and he says, "Today we're going to speak about Menashe the King." And he teaches them the halachah of where to cut the bread from. So the Ramban says, You know where avodah zarah comes from? It comes from where reality is all dispersed. As if it's all separate things. So you don't realize that it has one energetic source. But if people knew the truth, they would know that it all began as one point. So that makes it a appropriate reflection, as much as a physical reflection can be an appropriate reflection of the truth of the unity of G-d. Because it began as one point. So listen. Everytime you take your sustenance, and you feed your experience of you being separate, which is what you're doing every time you're eating. And if you feed your reality from the point of being separate, so then cut the bread from the point where it started baking from. Meaning the place that's most well-baked on the bread, because everything spread from there. And if you will be reminding yourself of that comtemplative nekudah, of that contemplative point, then you'll always be oriented yourself and connecting to the oneness from where it all emerged.
What was the question? Did someone sask me a question. I was answering a question, right? Ah, yeah, We're on target. Because our one deed, when it's completely focused, is the end point of that deed when G-d did when he made the world. That one point, spread it all out, and then it forms back into the one deed that you're doing now, (it's?) creatively connecting to it. That one kiss which says it all. Really couldn't be anything more.
I just want to say one more thing. When it becomes real and present and physical, ironically it's the most spiritual thing. Because all the other stuff can't hold it all the way the real present, right on the spot can. When that spot becomes a point of connection within, through a mitzvah--what a great opportunity, oh boy, we're very lucky. I don't think there's any other people like this that knows this truth. What a place it's going to be when everyone knows this truth. Do good, be good, consciousness of doing His will and exxpressing it. What a planet it will become.
(Question: Leah giving up her ego. Letting go, and Leah's final gift.?) This man named Zevulun, or this name which is Zevulun, the sixth son. Rabbenu B'chaya, a great Kabbalist, said that, the sixth son is the vav, the connectivity. The vav is the sixth letter of the alphabet, one line, it's also the letter of Yaakov because he runs from one end to the other connecting it all, as we saw in Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. He's the ladder, and he's the bridge. So Zevulun is where she totally becomes at one with him in creating a dwelling place which is the reality of them together. Is that clearer to you? (Interrupting) He's a person and a tribe head. He also is the one who provides for Yissahcar, the physical context for Yisasschar to function, as it says,… He dwells on the seashore, because he's always going out to sea to far, distant lands in order to connect with all of life and reality and make it all participant in the Bnei Yissaschar. That's what's going on, spiritually speaking. Physically speaking, he's the one who comes up with the goods, but spiritually, what he does is by bringing good from all over the planet. He doesn't do business in Israel. He's in chutz l'aretz, he's in import-export. He's like, his reality is: one of everything is participating in this, and everything is part of this. It can't be that Bnei Yisasschar is being supported by anything less than the whole planet. That's what Zevulun is. His blessing becomes "he dwells on the end points of the sea." The sea is the malchut. The ocean is the container that holds it. That's why it says at the end of time, that the knowing of G-d will cover the planet like the sea will cover the yam. Like the waters will cover the yam. So the mefarshim say, What do you mean? I thought the waters are the yam. The yam is the receptacle that gives it from and picture. And then G-d 's knowledge will cover the planet like water, which is the connective force of reality, it hold it together, covers the yam, fills the yam. That's when love will connect all because, really, love is the connective tissue, that's what holds it together. It's love, What else would be holding this together, at least from our perspective?
My dear talmid, Bariah Schechter,did I tell you this, about the yin and yang? He was learning Chinese medicine. So this Chinese medicine lecturer was explaining to the class about yin and yang. You know, the polarities, going through the whole thing, and she was explaining how they function, etc. and so at the end of class, he raises his hand, and he says, can you tell me something? Do yin and yang love each other? It's like so totally out of whack with Chinese philosohphy-- it's so Jewish. Because what's holding it all together is what we experience as love. Because it's all one thing. The unity of G-d is love. And that's not a kind of romantic thing to say. First of all, we saw that the name havayah, the inner workings of yud-key-vav-key is aleph heh, vet, heh, but beyond the naming, the point is that that's really what it is. Reality is simply manifesting different qualities and realities in different ways. What you experience as love, the different parts of this glass experience as connectivity. It's just different realities expressing in different forms.
(Question: Why is Sukkah the thing that the Rambam chooses to teach us about love and joy?) So it has to do with a number of factors that would be somewhat complex to get involved in right now. But the main one is that sukkah is the main point at the end of the year. You've gathered it all in. You've reached your conclusions. That's why we read Kohelet then. You're sitting now in a reality which is allowing you to have a vision of what it's all about. That's what it is. Its called the or makif. It's the surrounding light. It's where you go when you're dead from this world. Which is also what the sukkah celebrates, so to speak--you're dead and buried. Now you're able to look back at what it's all about. You're no longer in the fight. You're no longer in the struggle. You're taken care of. Your experiences of life, which has taken care of you. Now I can look back and see what it was all about. So in a certain sense, when you're dead is when you can really connect to life, when you're not fighting off all the stuff, and in the chase. Now that the year is over, now I can connect to the flow of life as it is. It's not about my ego, it's not about my struggle to make myself. Now, I touch life. It has to do with the sukkah.
Help, Chaya, are you going to save us? If I can bring it to a point, it's that. It's the joy in contact with the one concentrated act which says it all. And I've let go of my pre-judgemnts and pre-conceptions and pre-decisions, and I'm able to be in the moment as it's presenting itself and to live fully what it is that G-d is speaking through me right now.
(Question: That thing we want most is often so illusive but the formula you've been presenting is you let it go, and that's what brings it about anyway.)
You give up on the chitzoniut of it. Meaning, it doesn't have to come through this particular path that I've determined, which might even include me. I know this as a teacher. If I don't let go, and say what I say, and give it over to the students, and they'll take it where they're going to take it. And if I'm not willing to do that, I won't teach. And nothing will be realized. There are people that are like, I'll only write it in a book if I copyright it. But I'm not going to say anything about my chiddushim to anyone, chas v'shalom they should steal them away. There's such a thing, but then you lose the entire creative dynamic of the creativity which happens by virtue of it being with people. That's what I love, and it took me years to really be at peace at that. There's something that happens in the room because it's you particular people who are here, including the ones who have already left… because it's these particular people. There's a sort of creative house that's been made by virtue of the people who have been sitting here. I'm very aware of that and in a sense, it's not my Torah, it's the Torah of everyone in the room who brought this into reality. It's very interreactive for me.
For a long time I worried, "Is it because I'm a showman? I have to be showing it off?" A lot of self-denigrating thoughts around that: "It's all status seeking. If I were really honest, I would be sitting down writing it down, and then publish it anonymously." Really, there's something true about Zevulun, a house that's been built by virtue of all that who are connected in it. So yes, it's a letting go of propriety, but it's not a letting go in a sense of a surrender of a giving up, a yeush. There is a joy that comes about by virtue of it and then it produces the new children.
(Question: How tro bring that joy into something that would be an otherwise painful experience--giving up the shifcha) That's so weird, because the child the shifcha gives birth to, she calls him Asher, because G-d has made me happy. I'm not sure if I explained it, but we see some kind of reflection in that. It's a weird thing, but there are many barren couples that I've seen, that when they adopt their first child, then the gates open up. I'll give you the exact quote. The first one she calls bagad, which is a difficult name to understand, something like "this has been good luck," and then the second one she calls asher, my joy. So, you're looking for what that looks like in life, and how we might be cognizant of that as an avodah, of …a particaular form that we were expected something to come down through, without giving up the purpose and the life purpose but with loosening of the attachment to the particular form that we thought it would hold. Am I saying that right?
(This looks like as a formula, that birth joy, The joy doesn't come in doing it…. But if you can do it, then joy is born. I don't think it's natural to feel joy in that place. Maybe G-d doesn't want us to feel joy in doing it. Maybe just to rise to the challenge. But in the end that creates a bigger joy.)
(I have a response to that. Tying in to the class before this and this class. David is one of the happiest people and therefore can connect--)
The Rambam describes him as the "paradigm of joy"--
(--very fully with Hashem Also we see that David went through some of the most pain of everyone. So his joy could result from these holes, like in the class before we learned that in order to let G-d in, let us fulfill these desires, the ratzon that we need to open up, create holes, see that we are constantly lacking so that we can constantly grow. So that pain is creating those holes, those spaces… by her letting go and experiencing that sadness, so then her holiness is that much more intense because of everything she's going through.)
(Pain doesn’t have to be looked at as a negative thing. Darkenss isn't bad, just filled of itself. We don't have to fight it. Just as important as death is to life.)
Actually the midrash says that Rachel complained to Yaakov, How come you're not praying for me? When she says in the verses there, there is a rupture: Bring me children. If you don't, I'm going to die. So Yaakov says, You think I'm instead of G-d? And then the next line is her turning over her shifcha to Yaakov. So there's a rupture. Did she go through something in between? So the midrash says, she said to Yaakov, How come you're not praying for me? And Yaakov says, Look at your grandmother and see what she did. She was machnisah tsaratah lbetah. Which has a double meaning of tsarah, antagonist wife and her suffering. She brought it into her house. So if that's what needs to be, then that's what I'll do. And then Leah saw that and did the same.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript:
We had been travelling down two different paths regarding the realization of Yaakov and Yisrael, and there is very particular and different relationships between them and Leah and Rachel. And we discovered some very crucial realizations about the way in which Yisrael comes into his fullness regarding in the way he comes back for the pachim ketanim, what he knows to leave behind and what he knows he has to have with him—clarity about that. And we had the growing realization that Yisrael is on one level; one way of looking at him is the realized self, someone who has very deep clarity as to who he is and what he's doing, and since it's Yisrael and not just any person, so his realization is not just a matter of him personally, but is crucial for the entire creation, because Yisrael is the one about whom it says, Bishvili nivrah haolam. At the beginning of Bereshit, Rashi even brings this: Bereshit, bishvil hareshit, for the first one, who is the first one? So the first one is Yisrael reshit tvuato, Yisrael is the first of his production and that is a remez to what G-d says about us, over and over again, before He takes us out of Mitzraim and then leaving Mitzraim to the point where it becomes clear that bni bechroi Yisrael. Yisrael is my first-born son. What does this mean? Yisrael is the first reflection of what I have in mind for creation. And this is also hinted at by Reshi is a reference to chochmah. Rechit chochmah yirat hashem; the kabbalah interprets that verse as Wisdom is the beginning. Reshit chochmah, because the first movement which is expressed, as opposed to will, which is an impression. But it's the first thought, of Yisrael.
And that is the most primal and primary revelation of G-d's will which also then, all the way down to the bottom, of where it becomes manifest in the world is Yisrael, which is knesset Yisrael which is the malchut, and that's why it says in the kabbalah abayasad bartah. That father has established daughter. That seminal thought of what this world will be becomes reflected all the way down in the daughter who is knesset Yisrael who brings that to realization in full living. And the realization of that becomes expressed for us in the personality or in the story of Yisrael in the world, this man called Yisrael, who is a transpersonal phenomenon, really, it's not him in his persoanl life that's of interest to us of people of Torah, but whether him and his particular life of what is a window to a transpersonal personality, something which is beyond his personal expression and then becomes relevant to all of us for all of eternity. This Yisrael is the conscious reflection of the divine thought as to what this world would be. So his name is Yisrael, in other words is li rosh, I have the head, the head belongs to me, and as we saw deeply, it's the counterpart or the inner life of Yaakov who is akeivi. I have a heel, basically, mamash the other end of reality. He's the outer body, the externality of living. He is the struggle, he is the needing to overcome, he is all of those aspects of life that are the process towards, that are not the realization of. But Yisrael is the realization of. And this was very important for us to recognize not only in terms of what we can become as Yisrael, becoming the head of creation, being it's guiding life, and this could be so powerful to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, that He even gave the name to Yisrael, "kel," and said If I am a G-d in the elyonim, then you are the god in the tachtonim, which means that you are the head of creation, its evolution, its evolving realization and coming to purpose is reliant on you. You are the G-d, you are the ones who are leading the way, you are the ones who have the greater and deeper awareness of My purpose and become alive with that. Become the ones who now, becomes the head of creation and move it towards where it is headed. This is what we are here for and it's so crucial for us to maintain consciousness of that.
So we've been looking at that in terms of personal life. We've been looking at how a person becomes more aware of his purpose and destiny in life and more clear about what his particular voice and expression are. This will become a very deep and intimate relationship with G-d, rather than falling into a project of making himself "of himself," which is where Pharoah ends up, which B"H we might see in the future as the one who say li v'ori v'ani asitani. You see, bni bechri yisrael is what needs to be established in opposition to Pharoah in being king of the world. That's what happens when G-d says, I'm taking them out. Why are You taking them out? I'm going to show them that in the end, b'ni bechori yisrael, and that's why I'm going to kill your first born sons. Because your first born children are born out of a consciousness of "We make ourselves." But my firstborn born? He remains in the awareness and consciousness that he is my first born so, meaning that he is the expression and manifestation and intended to be in alignment with Me and My purpose. Now that can only be in personal life inasmuch as a person is aware of their own personal purpose. This is where people get confused sometimes and say, That doesn't sound very spiritual, it sounds self-involved. Spiritual has to do with devolving myself of my personal path. It has to do with becoming generic and being mvatel myself. Isn't that what spiritual is about? Spiritual is also about that, but only if one knows the path of the shov, of coming back into this wrold and beocming re-embodied by having perfect clarity about what it is that my particular portion in that grand scheme, vision and consciousness is. If you lose that, so then you have basically have given up the world, which is not the path of Yisrael, the path of Yisrael is to be eloka btachtonim, to be godly in the lower world, or in a less radical language, to make a dirah batachtonim to make a dwelling place for G-d in the lower worlds, by virtue of that particular manifsestion, which is your life, And that's why it's so personal—li rosh Yisrael, in terms of its realization here. IT's both I have a head, which is a personal reference, that I have a vision, a wisdom. It's a more transcended reference, that I have a head means, I have a G-d. Yisrael, struggle with elokim, who is the name of tG-d about the givens, gematira ha tevah, he is the G-d of the givens. Sarita elokim v'anashim batuchal. That you will be able to overcome them and become the yisrael who is lvado. So all this is different aspects of what I've seen; I've expanded it and deepening it now in terms of its divine aspect.
It has this quite extraordinary parallel in my mind in terms of what goes through Leah. She goes through her own persoanl process from being the snua anochi down to the experience of hodaya, of the gilui of hod, of her glory that G-d has given her, which is also the realization of her personal chelek, of natati yoter michelki. She knows, as we saw in the mashal of the cohen to know that's G-d having given His self to her, in having given that to her. And then, a interesting thing happens. I'm continued now in the same vision, now in Yisrael's counterpart, Leah.
She has two more children after Yehudah. After the Chumash says v'taamod laledet, that she's done giving birth. That she has arrived at natalti yoter m'chelki, and that she has been given and her personal realization is the greatest access to G-d (12:02) through the medium of hodaya. And then, she has Yisachar. She declares about him, She's socher, she hilre Yaakov for the night, by giving over the dudaim to Rachel, and when she gives birth to Yisachar, she says, now I'm giving sachar for having turned over my shifcha to Yaakov. If you remember, that was in parshat vayetze, chpater twetny-nine.
Then we asked, What are you talking about? Yisachar was sachar or hiring out Yaakov to sleep with him. Who are you trying to kid? Why are you referring it back to the sachar of giving over the shifcha? Chapter thirty, verse eighteen, where Leah says, Natan elohim shcari, asher natati shifchati l'ishi. G-d has given me my reward for having given my shifcha over to my husband. Vatikrah shmo Yisahar. Then she calls him yisachar. That's not really honest. Sachor schartichi is what she said to Yaakov when she met him, I have hired you out so yisachar, I'm getting repaid for what I invested. I'm getting back on my investment, that's what's being said there. But the truth is not that way. The truth is that which she is revealing is the deep decret of sachar. That sachar has arrived in her chelek because she has given her limited self up. She gave her husband over to her shifcha so that his realization whould occur. And that is the aspect of the selflessness in the self-realization. This is a paradox. She has surrendered herself, giving up her husband to her shifcha. She has resigned, so to speak, to a higher purpose. She then, what about her. So then something has now happended between her and Yaakov, or the emerging Yisrael. Which is that it's not about her; something has happened that is about them. And that might even mean sometimes that in her limited pleasure and achievement that she gives that up and passes that up and surrenders that. That's how she gets the sachar of yisachar. And that's the only way that divine sachar happens. In the giving up and the surrendering of the particular forms. So it's this paradoxical condition of surrendering the form but insisting upon or realizing the specific and beautiful and individual purpose that is mine. But here something has happened in which she has joined together with him. That His purpose should be realized.
So we saw this last time, and it was the beginning of the emergence of David in the dudaim. It has to do with the next child she has. In terms of the process we have been watching with Leah, it almost looks like Zevulun is a regression. How? Because next, she has the sixth child. Vatahar Leah, v'teled ben shishi l'Yaakov. Who is the sixth child? Vatomer Leah, zvadani elohim oti zeve tov, G-d's giving me a good portion. Hapaam yizbeleini ishi. So now my husband is yizbeleini, Rashi says, now my husband is a home, a beit zvul, a castle, palace. Now my husband and me are a palace. Rashi says, yizbeleini is lashon beit zvul, mador. A place to live. That's the dirah of tachtonim. What does that mean? Initially when we look at this, we're wondering Does he love, me, does he love me not? At the beginning of her calling her children their names, it was all about is he with me, is he not with me? Then she left that and Yehudah and Yisachar are beyond that, and then she's wondering about him again? No. But it's not she's only in her self, nor is she concerned being with him, it's this whole new thing now. There's a dirah, a place of dwelling that has now emerged by virtue of Zevulun's coming into the world. That's something else. When a couple, in their togetherness are something which is beyond the two of them, that's beit mador. Beit zvul. When the couple is indefinable. When you talk about the home of this couple, so there's a way to look at it, and it's occupied by him and by her, there's the mother and the father, but then there's the home. There's not a new element, nothing's been added, it's still the same two people, but it's an entity that's something else, it's the picture of the whole. This is what happens at the end of this process that we've been following, that's the beit mador. Now there's going to be a home. That's Zevulun, the end of her giving birth.
If you look in the Chumash, the way the machaneh is built (the encampment around the mishkan) so on the front end are Yehudah, Yisachar, and Zevulun. And the reason is because Yisachar and Zevulun are expressions or elements of what Yehudah is because the real malchut has both elements: I have given myself and only in that is there sachar; and it is not just a conglomerate of individual elements, but rather, this is a dwelling place. This is the kingdom of a couple, of a people, of humanity, reality, the entire cosmos, which is the kingdom of G-d. And it's a kingdom because all of the individual elements are within a greater whole, which is defined by being this kingdom.
That's what a malchut is. It's the speaking of the twenty-six, meaning, shem havayah, kaf vav, and mem lamed taf, milat, the speaking. G-d's presence has become a word, which means to say that it has become an expression and a manifestion, just like a word is. You can't pick a word apart into its letters and expect to have anything left of the word. But a word is nothing more than the conglomeration of its individual letters, isn't it? I mean, it's just a bunch of letters, right? If you really want to know what's in the word, then start picking it apart, the way a scientist will start analyzing and dissecting different pieces and parts of, let's say a butterfly. There's the entrails, and there's these little fuzzy things, that's all the butterfly is, isn't it? And if you dissected it all and put it on a slide, you have it now, you can enlarge it, and you can see all of the elements, and now we're really finding out what a butterfly is. And if we can enlarge it more in a deeper picture, then we'll really, really know what a butterfly is. It's exacly in a sense, the opposite direction of finding out what a butterfly is. Because a butterfly can only be known, not only by seeing its whole, but by seeing it in context of the flowers, and seeing it flying from place to place, and a beautiful springtime afternoon, and of lovers in the field, and of children frolicking. What is a butterfly? Is a butterfly not all of that, too? You'd never draw a butterfuly--if you're really drawing one— without the sun shining, and flowers blossoming in the background, and maybe some children and a couple of bees buzzing around. That's a butterfly. No! A butterfly, if you just dissect it, you'll find out what a butterfly is. So who's right?
So, clearly, you can find out what a butterfly is by dissecting it, but you're finding out the elements of what makes a butterfly, but a butterfly is what I just described. The truth is, then a butterfly is really only—what is it? What did I add when I put together all the pieces of a butterfly, and make it into a butterfly? What did I add? Nothing. It's just the same pieces that were there when it was dissected on the slide. And I didn't really add anything when I put it into the background; all these things were there before. But the wholeness of that vision becomes the picture that really is what a butterfly is. I have to be careful about how I use the word "really." But I've added nothing else. That adding nothing else is the beit mador. Now it's the home. What was just added was just a bunch of kids before, and the mom and dad and did something get added here? Yeah, it became a word. G-d became a word, so to speak, yud key vav key became a word, it became a number. This is why gematria is so important. When it becomes a number, then you can't divide it up any more. It's just this one entity. That's malchut, the realization of dirah batachtonim. But people make mistakes sometimes. People think that dirah batachtonim means that I'm the empty vessel and He's in it. No. Dirah batachtonim means I'm making a dirah and He's in it. What does it mean to make a dwelling place? That there is something in the connection between me and Him, in the realization of all of this together, which is its own reality. And only by virtue of its unification. That is where now things have arrived for Leah in her relation with Yisrael, and that is why she is done giving birth when that happens, because that process is over. She has become the lamed vav, the lo, the e'eseh lo, complete belonging together in something which is this transcendence of the particular elements that compose the composite reality that is the beit mador.
This is very crucial to realize—the trivialization of what malchut is in terms of our relationship with G-d because it's not something different. It's the same kind of a thing in which it's not Him or us, and we're not standing separate, but we form the malchut, which is HaKadosh Baruch Hu's reflection and manifestation into reality.
This is David. David, who is born out of the dudaim. David, who is born out of Yehudah. It shouldn't confuse you—Yisachar, David? He comes from Yehudah, Because Yehudah comes together with Yisachar and Zevulun. It's part of his camp. You can't have Yehudah without Yisachar and Zevulun, in terms of there being a giving up of self in order that there be sachar. And also a realization in the overarching picture of what it is, which is no added element but is the overall picture of what is. And that is David, and that's why, in the end, David, is also the dod, the dodim, the lover, which is where very true love is realized, when it's not something that I experience as me or you, it's where we're together in a picture. Using the word picture, because that's exactly how malchut is describe in Kabbalah. Malchut is described as a temunah, which directly derives from chochmah, wisdom, which is kneged vision, the first vision. The first vision then becomes realized then when all of those elements become incorporated into one picture. That's what I was referring to when I said Aba yasad barta, that father established daughter. First vision brings daughter—daughter being malchut—who is the feminine aspect, because in a sense she is an encasement, the holding of, an incorporating of all the elements into one entity. So, I wouldn't exactly call it fleshing out, but rather abstracting some of the elements of what we've been looking at. In Chassidut, this is called a birur.
Last time we were in the body with things and storyline, but I'm trying to give you access to the spiritual, transpersonal aspect of it. It's an irony, and I hope some of you hold the space, but the more it becomes abstracted and spiritualized, actually, then the more it becomes applicable to myriad applications. The more it's just particular, then it's just one particular story. But the more you abstract it, then the more you see that it's shayach, here, it's shayach here, it's shayach between me and my kids, it's shayach between me and my husband, it's shayach between me and the rest of you in this classroom, it's shayach between me and the rest of humanity. This isn't just one story, this is a reality applicable to everything.
People say, Wow, that's really high! When you say, That's really high, you mean it's something which is beyond the specific. It's like when you're standing up on a mountain and you see the whole picture. And now you can say, I am going to see that reflected in and—now I am going to emphasize this part of it. (31:30) You have a high perpective. We use sort of a geographic location to talk about something which is intellectual, it's an abstraction. But that's the point, that's how we experience high things, low things. Look, low things are right here (demonstrating). So high things would be applicable to myriad applications. That's why it's so important for us to gain access to this in the Torah, otherwise the Torah just becomes a storybook, and then you get all sorts of crazy contortions of how to read it and what to do with it—it becomes historicized and irrelevant, etc. (sic)
I say this specifically in the context of Yisachar, because the Rabbis say he becomes the father of yodei haitim: Bnei Yisachar yodei haitim, the children of Yisachar are the ones who know the times. Those are the rabbis. True Rabbis know the times. What does it mean to be a real talmid chacham who knows the times? He knows how to apply things to varying times. He is aware and conscious of shifting times. Changing times. People who stay stuck in times as it was, so they can't really have anything relevant to say, so then everyone, they'll try to push you or force you into some previous mode when G-d's moved time on already. If you belong to the world of Yisachar who has been born of Leah's having given herself up, it's not about me, let me touch what is right now, then I can become yodei haitim. That's a verse in Divrei Hayamim. Bnei Yisachar yodei haitim, which the Chachamim say, yeah, that's the Talmidei Chachamim. Now I can touch what really is, I can touch the eyt, I can touch the time. It's not about my thing. But weren't you just talking about your personal vision, your own voice? Yes, of course I am. But how is it that your own voice comes to expression if what you're doing is you're giving yourself up to the higher reality? Gee, I don't know. I can't answer that question in a dichotomous thinking, it's a paradox. It's like people say, it depends on the place you're coming from. For me to give up my own voice in this reality means to give up the voice that is meant to be in this reality. So it would mean giving up the reality that I’m committing myself to. In other words, if I'm committing myself to G-d's purpose and the realization in this world, so I’m giving myself up to that. That's marvelous, but you're missing in the picture. I thought you were committed to G-d's realization and manifestation in the world. That's right, so I’m giving myself up, so I'm selfless now. Selfless? Well, that's too bad because your self was supposed to be part of that reality. Ok, so I'm going to be involved in my own self. So then I'm forgetting about the whole of reality and all of G-d's creation. So? Well, but I wanted to be committed to that. Okay. So then be committed to that. Okay, so I'm giving myself up. So, what do you want me to do? Which way to go? It's a paradoxical condition which I think people experience. Like there's a flow of personal realization, a flow of personal joyous creativity of "this is what I'm bringing to the world." When it's pure, that's the way it always comes down. Then you start taking it for yourslef and you think, it's about me, and my own etc. It's garbage, it's junk already, it's lost, and then you become an idealog(?), and you have this idea that you're trying to promote, then you lose yodei haitim, you can no longer be related to what's here and now in the changing times because you've become convinced that only what I bring is what needs to be brought. So then you've lost it, and you go back.
So it's an ongoing oscillation between these visions and realizations, but oscillation is what produces right consciousness. That's the oscillation of going up and down the ladder. That's the oscillation that produces Leah's coming into her personal realizatoin and it being expressed through hod and hodaya which then comes down into its two elements of Yisachar and Zevulun. There's a sachar to this. There's a personal reward involved in this which comes by virtue of my having resigned myself and surrendered myself and there's a consciousness of "this is a picture that I'm a part of," which is called Zevulun. There's a big mador. So now we've built this house together. So that's the dirah batachtonim where G-d says atah, elokah batachtonim, that's the dirah batachtonim. It's only when it has that real combination of my manifestation in the picture which is the one which is beyond the specifics of who are the members in the picture.
If I'm saying things that on an intellectual level don't make sense, that's fine. It's a state of being, and it's a difficult thing to divvy out. And the only way it becomes divvied out is through the two additional children. They can like show you this. So, this becomes the world of David, because the king really has to have that. And David's most powerful and beautiful thing which the Rabbis teach us about David Hamelech—it's important to note that there are some important Chamamim that say things more overtly. This is a picture of Hillel Hazakeyn, one of the teachers of Torah she b'al peh—he has to do with hod because l'hodot ul'halel, remember we're talking on Chanukah, hilul, Hillel, is the one who's dancing in simchah at the Simchat Beit Hashoevah, the Water-Drawing Festival. He says, Im ani kan, hakol kan. If I am here, everything is here. That's Hillel. If you remember, Hillel is the one who said, When you're dancing in front of the kallah, say kallah na v'chasudah, because of course she finds chen in her husband's eyes, and who needs to be pulled together. (I really see why this needs to be a book! [sic.]) But the point is, saying Im ani kan, hakol kan, is a reflection of that and in the Kabbalah, it says that he was experiencing malchut, he was experiencing the Shechinah. Chazal say that the Shechinah was present at the Simchat Beit Hashoevah. The Shechinah is most present when there is joy. Because joy is the experience of the flow of His presence. That's when the Shechinah is there. And that's why Hillel the Zakeyn says, Im ani kan hakol kan. If there is a real realization of ani, then hakol which is a reference to malchut, hakol is here. Everything is here. I am not standing apart from there. I am not standing apart from reality observing it. It's all right here. But all will only be here if I am truly me. Now try go living that.
There is beautiful passage in Orot Hakodesh by Rav Kook in which he brings from Yechezkel HaNavi standing somewhere in Babylon by a river called Nahar Kvar. He says V'ani b'toch hagola. I am in the exile. He says the following: It's a beautiful passage and it deserves its own teaching. He says, Ani b'toch hagola that the Navi is saying, is reflecting the greatest abomination, when the I goes into exile. This is both personal and kabbalistic, because ani is the name for malchut. So when the I goes into galut, and describes how this has happened over the course of time and how things descended into the condition that the I has gone into Galut. And it all begins with Yechezkiel standing on Nahar Kvar.
It's the simplest thing. Nahar Kvar is the absolute opposite of being yodeya haitim. Because Nahar Kvar literally means the River of Wasness. That's the River of Babylon. The deep thing about the River of Wasness is exactly that non-dynamic aspect of selfhood which happens when you separate yourself out from the all. I'll tell you exactly what I mean by that. What happens when a person gets stuck in the past, and is all about shorring up and establishing and consolidating everything of the past, now it's going to be solid. This is me. I've got it. Finally I've got it. This is me. If your experience of this is what you have been in the past, everything you've come to, then you have it like, I'm stopping here. Now everything else is going to be around what I am. So the ani goes into galut. The ani goes into exile. Why? Because the ani is always a dynamic. Why is it a dynamic? Of course it's a dynamic. Even once you've become aware of all the things you've done up until now, and even though you've done work in establishing and realizing what your purpose is. That's all great and crucial work, now it's become clear. But as soon as you're done you say, Now I've got it, Now I know exactly who I am now, your ani is in dynamic, because your ani is always a dynamic of everything that's happening right now. It's got to be . This is why the Chachamim say that Yaakov couldn't come back to Eretz Yisrael because he was just a fire. And he needed Yosef who was the flame. But I want to put aside now the question of Yosef as the flame—that's its own thing. But Yaakov is a fire. Yaakov, by the way, is malchut ila'ah. In the kabbalah, malchut is tiferet, Yaakov, the lower malchut is David. And in the middle you have this flame who is Yosef, the yesod. He's a fire. What does it mean to be a fire, which by the way becomes most manifest in hod, which is the fire midah. You can't be yesterday's fire—
"I am going to be yesterday's fire." Fire is always something which is burning right now. As soon as it becomes yesterday's fire, it's not fire anymore. Let's get a snap on that fire, and freeze! Freeze? Well, that's the opposite of fire, isn't it? People do this, and I totally understand why. This is it, I got myself, I know exactly who I am, could you leave me alone with self reflection and contemptaion, in thinking, and self-awareness? Thinking, Okay, are you done? Now you're finished, now you are who you are, now be that.
That's a falsehood. That's when you try to separate it out from what's real and right now. That's Nahar Kvar. That's, in a sense, the life project of Pharoah, who is the king of Mizraim, the king of the very first place of galut, who, like, li ori v'ani asitani. I have made myself, which is also a statement that Yechezkiel Hanavi says about Pharoah. Pharoah declares, The river is mine, li ori, vani asitani, and I have made myself. Interesting. He is a man who basically is the source for Nahar Kvar. The river is mine, I own it, I posees it. I possess Moshe. (inaud. 47:45) Vani asitani, I have made myself, I am done. The project has been finished, it's complete. Fantasti, you're amazing, and he'll be the greatest dictator ever that could be imagined. And that's all you could be, is a dictator who rules over it all and is always trying to keep it under control that it should never counterveil or contradict what I have realized to be myself. That's the biggest lie.
That's why at the end of kriyat shema we say the most amazing thing. It makes you shudder to finish kriyat shema. Because at the end of kriyat shema we say Ani hashem elokeichem asher hotzeiti etchem m'eretz mitzrayim lihiyot lahem elohim I am G-d who's taking you out of Mitzrayim that I should be your G-d. Ani hashem elokeichem. And this is how Rav Kook ends that passage. What exacly are we saying when we say Ani hasehm elokeichem? I am the L-rd your G-d. Who is speaking there saying, I am the L-rd your G-d? (49:15) But inasmuch as G-d dynamically always reflects His reality in creation the greatest port through which He manifests that is going to be the Ani of the dynamic person who is now in movement, in an ongoing movement of a changing reality. Only that will be G-d right now. What else could be G-d right now? What was G-d yesterday? And the yodei haitim, the ones who know the times, the bnei Yisachar, who know the reward, what the yesh sachar, and the pleasures of what is real, present and current—they are the only ones who can produce Torah which is appropriate to being psak halachah and speak to people in a way that's real for them. That's what Hillel is saying, ani kan—that's why Hillel, by the way, is a lashon of fire—(inaud-v'hillo ner? (50:28) we saw hilul is a language of fire, od glow. So there he is glowing in the Beit Hamidrash, dancing, on fire, the Rabbis say they would toss around firey torches at the Simchat Beit Hashoevah. Im ani kan, hakol kan. If I am here, then Shechina is here. Why is Shechina hakol? Because it's everything which is right now. And only that is what would be real to say about me, that I am me, I am ani.
So this becomes the ani, becomes the world of malchut but only when it's a cleanly and clearly realization of a expression and manifestation of a porthole of G-d is what ani kan hakol kan. And I want to tell you a beautiful thing. Standing on Nahar Kvar, standing at this River of Babylon of what was. So there are different experiences that people have when they're standing on a riverside. Most people relate to rivers as time; it's a flow. Some people relate to rivers all the time that's gone by. Some people relate to the time that 's going to be. It might have to do with your age. But for whom the river is what was, those are the ones who stand in Galut. At Yom Kipper, there's one other place that this word eyt, which becomes very prevelant in Kohelet, for reasons we won't get into now, but this word et yodei haitim becomes prominent in Yom Kippur, because the man who, the lo b'chol eyt, yavo al ha kodesh, if you look at the word at the beginning of parshat acharei mot which describes the avodah of Yom Kippur, so you'll see that there's a lot of talk about et there. Ayin taf, times, and there are twenty-eight times, there's an eyt for this, an eyt for that.
So, on Yom Kippur there's a person who takes the se hazazel out to the midbar, the desert, he takes the scapegoat out to the desert and he's called the ish iti. And there are different explanations of what that means to be an ish iti. What's an ish iti and why is he the relevant person to be doing this? Literally it means He is a man of the time. That's exactly it because true atonement and release from the past which binds us can only happen when a person is able to be now in this moment. That's why he's the ish iti. It's the simple pshat. He's the time man or the timely man, relating completely to the time. It's a crazy thing, but that's why we say Kol Nidre at the beginning of Yom Kippur. The reason in your machzor that it says we say Kol Nidre is that once upon a time there were these marranos. And these marranos had to hide out, when they came to shul, and they would have to be absolved from oaths that they would take from accepting Catholicism. And then we have to ask for permission to be mitpalel with the avar yanim, to pray with the sinners, the transgressers, a great historical stuff, put it on a shelf in a library.
But that's not why we're really saying Kol Nidre. It's like how the history brought it about why we should say Kol Nidre at the beginning of Yom Kippur. But the truth is that you need to be matir your neder at the beginning of Yom Kippur, because I am now enetering into complete presence. I cannot be bound by the oaths I've taken. It's as simple as that. And we ask G-d for a heter that we should pray with the avar yanim. It's so funny because avar yan in Hebrew means a transgressor, and a past-er. An avar yan is someone who is in the past. Those are the sinners. Because they cannot comes loose from what has to be now and always being dragged by and controlled by and determined by what has been.
So this brings us down into a world of real malchut and a place of real loving. Why? Because love always has to do with relating in truth with what is. You could never love what is not. You could only love what is. And always has to be present. And that becomes dod, the David, who has all this. This is why—and maybe we'll end with this—ironically, David wasn't meant to live. Because malchut cannot be its own thing, it can only be in the context of all. The midrash says, David was not supposed to live. Adam Harishom was being shown all the different generations, the midrash says. So he's going through them. He's impressed by this, and this, and he comes to David. He says, Wow, who is this man? That's David, the lover. How long is he going to live? So G-d says, he's not going to live at all. What do you mena he's not going to live? Well, he's going to be stillborn. That's what the midrash says, So Adam says, not going to live at all? That can't be! Don't let that be! So G-d says, What do you want to do about it? Adam Harishon says, I'll give him some of my life. How much do you want to give him? I'll give him seventy years. Seven is kneged the malchut. That's why Adam Harishon only lives nine hundred and thirty years, when he was supposed to have lived a thousand. Elef shanim b'einecha ki yom etmol, A thousand years in Your eyes are like yesterday. Tehillim syas, Who is that referring to? To Adam Harishon, who is supposed to live a thousand years. But that is if you're supposed to live yesterday, ki yom etmol. But if you live in the present, David emerges with his seventy years. And he is able to be that because only he is nothing of his own, and he is everything together. But by being the specific person that he is. And don't try to understand that. Because you can't. Just like it was impossible for David to come into the world.—it was a physical impossibilty for the world to contain David Hamelech, for him to be born. He was stillborn. Because he is nothing of his own. He is everything all at once. That's David, that's real love . That's yodeya itim, That's to be one who's really so present and so real to what is that he can say, Ani hashem elokeichem emet, this is true only this is true.
I don’t know what to do with this, all you can do is sing, which is why he becomes the Anim zmirot yisrael, he just sings, and longs for, but sings—it's a vibration because a song is a vibration. He's just vibrating back and forth with this reality and then he becomes the singer. And then all of reality becomes like a resonance of his presence. This is so deep, that ultimately only that can become the tikkun for the moon that complained, we can both use the same crown? Yes, of course we can both use the same crown if our realization is this being a big dirah. This being a big home, Who's giving and who's taking, you're not looking at who's giving and who's taking, when it's a home—that's stupid! You're in a reality that's far beyond that right now. That's why at kiddush hachodesh we're saying David melech yisrael chai v'kayam, and we're celebrating the re-emergence of the moon, and that possibility for that realization of that kind of a wholeness which is what the moon lost at her first complaint. Because only through David Hamalech's consciousness, who holds it all—im ani kan, hakol kan—will you ever overcome this contestual foolishness at like, you can't have two lights, holding one keter. Yes, you can, if it's really one keter. It's the keter of the malchut, It's the higher supernal consciousness that has both specific and all and only Him at once. It's a peleh and the (inaud. 1:01:28) says, there's nothing except to meditate that kind of consciousness. Nothing except to vibrate that. It's not an enunciated, delineable expression. It's only a song. It becomes the shir pashut which the kabbalah says, there'a shir pashut and a shir m'chupal and a shir meshulash, there's a single song and a double song and a triple song, this is the single song. Yisrael is yashar or yasor, he will sing kel. He will be singing G-d. That's David, just singing G-d. But he's singing and dancing, and he loses it when he's dancing for the mishkan he's losing it, and he says to Michal, who is kelim, and who's trying to contain it all, I'll make myself even more disgraceful and dance even more, it's got to be alive and real, actual and present, if it's going to be anything that is expressed the truth of his love, That is the dod which is david, and it eventually becomes in Shir Hashirim, ani l'dodi and dodi li. And I am for David, and David is for me, I am for my lover and my lover is for me. In which all of that delineation and distinction disappears into the rapture of the presence of G-d. And the realization that it is only through the particular voice which is the one who he is gifted with, that His presence will be song. Eventually Rachel touches that. That's why it says, Mi ikolech mi bechi. V'einayich min dima. You stop your voice from crying and your eyes from tearing ki yesh sahcar l'peulatech. Becaues there is yesh sachar, that's yisachar. L'peulatech. That’s its own story, the story of Rachel. But David is the continuation of Yehudah, the dalet of Yehudah into its realization of the perfect lover. And gives us all access to love through his accomplishment, his realization. So today if I might summarize. Let me give you a brief summary.
We followed through bringing some kind of completion to what we have been seeing of Yisrael and Leah, and we saw Yisrael, li rosh, in the consciousness of creation which comes to specific expression through a particular person, and of course Yisrael is the greatest expression of that, being bni bechori, being the child of G-d, his first born son, what he really wants for his planet, for his family, so to speak, and Leah for her completing of the process, making a beit mador, making a dwelling place, which is a reality which is beyond the particular specifics, it's the whole entity. And so when a marriage becomes a whole entity rather than two players. When the world becomes an entity rather than all these players, when man and G-d together become, so to speak, in the aspect of G-d which is reflected and expressed, not his deepest being, but the aspect of Himself that becomes expressed, when they become two players, then they become one together, so then that becomes the true dirah b'tachtonim, the real true dwelling place, and that becomes revealed eventually through David Hamelech and the malchut.
This is what we're referring to when we say Shem yisrael hashem elokeinu hashem echad. When Yaakov came to give the brachot to his children, it says he wanted to reveal to them the end time, the ketz. And then it got blocked. So he started wondering, Maybe something is wrong with you people, that I can't reveal the ketz to you. You know what they say to him? Shema yisrael, Stop talking to us like Yaakov who only sees the struggle, the disparate parts. Shema yisrael, hashem elokeinu hashem echad. We know that there is one head to all this creation. We know that it's all one personality coming to realization and we know we're parts of that. Give us a bracha that we should be worthy parts of that. And let that be your revelation of the ketz, the end of time, when you give each of us a bracha that's appropriate to who we are, and pray that it should come its full manifestation and realization. Let that be your bracha. And that will be the ketz. Shema yisrael, Listen yisrael, not Yaakov, Hashem elokeinu, It's all one, it's only Him. And he says to that, baruch shem kevod malchuto leolam vaed. His name is blessed. And you know to whom His name is blessed is referring to? Each and every one fo you. That's his name. That's Baruch. That's the blessings he gives. Baruch shem keod malchuto leolam vaed. That's the blessings he gives, His malchut. Should be blessed forever through you in the unfolding expression and realization of His oneness. Can you live that? If you can live that then the ketz is right here. So then every time you say, Shema Yisrael, then you're saying, Yup, we're still the children of Yaakov struggling the path towards Yisrael, towards the realization of the shir el, the song of G-d, still singing it, we're still
L-rding over elokim so to speak, the givens in referring to the consciousness of the purpose and vision of all of creation. The kets is here. You can hear it singing. Are there any questions?
I've been walking with this visual--when you talked about Yaakov, everything he touched. The wake we leave behind us as we walk and it’s a really powerful image because it brings so much consciousness to everything, the movement, I can't seet he energy necessarily, but let's say I'm walking in water. And the same is tue in walking in the air. So envisioning, what is the wake, how am I changing everything around me. So the song also brings a whole other elemen tto that, another level to that image.
Very much. Yeah, it's like sympathetic vibration. I believe a lot that prayer is like that and that's why David is the great pray-er also. And he says, V'ani tefilah. He says about himself, my selfhood is prayer. And a lot of how prayer works—and this is also from Rav Kook—is through a sort of sympathetic vibration. You've shifted consciousness. And since your consciousness is part of all consciousness, so then when your consciousness shifts, so then everyone's consciousness shifts. Even if it's just a little bit, depending on how focused and precise you are, so it will become more or less impactful. Even on that level, prayer is never lost. Because you've shifted the consciousness of the planet which you are a part of. People look at iyun tefilah, Chazal say this, iyun tefilah tochelet v'moshechet machalat lev. An ongoing longing becomes a sickness of the heart. Chazal say, those are the people who it's a pasuk in mishleh, they are always seeking to see if their prayers have been realized. So they're heartsick. The meaning of that is that's because they are looking in the wrong places. In other words, it's happening. It may not be happening as quickly, as overtly, or external as you want it to be happening. But it's happening. That's the type of iyun tefilah that Chachamim say is not an acceptable iyun tefilah, to be looking to see if it's happened. You got prayer wrong. You get the wrong idea about prayer. It has to do with it happening in the world, of course, but it also has to do with everything having to do with sympathetic vibration. Because my ani is now vibrating at a different tenor so then v'ani tefilah—so another pasuk that David says, v'ani tefilati lecha, et ratzon. That my ani is a tefliah to you in an et ratzon, in a moment of will, like a moment that we were talking about before. Like I am totally in contact with the will of this moment. I can only be contacted with the will of this moment If I am not completely bound by and distorted by my preconceptions and decisions and predeterminations of what ought to be right now. I can pray and talk to G-d about changing, growing, and moving this, but only if I am willing to see exactly what is right now and be in that and be real with that—that's v'ani tefliati lashem et ratzon. That's where my prayer is really yours, G-d, when it's in the eyt ratzon, when it's in the real timeliness of will, when I am totally connected to His will right now. Only then can I talk about impacting that, changing that moving that, shifting that. But if it's all about predetermined stuff, so then you're not aligned. And you might also be impacting things but it will be far less in the alignment in a way that it will be cause the vibration in the reality at large. Just like only Hillel can say im ani kan hakol kan. If myself is here, then all is here. If ani is not here, all is not here, can't be here. That is really the Vayifga bamakom that we saw at the beginning of Yaakov as he began his journey, and it really was a journey, leaving Beer Sheva, going out, hitting the place, going to sleep, letting go, so then he could really be in the place, and then everything is there. All of a sudden everything in Eretz Yisrael is right there. That was Vayifga bamakom Vayishkav bamkom hahu Vayishkav, the Arizal says, Vayesh kaf bet.
There is reality of these twenty-two letters, now form the words. Go to sleep and dream. Not as an escape but as a way to become real. Then he can go to a place called Charan. Which means anger. Charon af. He can go to the place which means anger. Anger is the ultimate emotive expression of disjointed non-alignment. Not accepting what is. I will not take this, I will not have this. This is not the way I want it to be. YA! Charan! No! That is exactly the opposite of Vayifga bamakom. And all of that anger, which becomes total disconnected and total disalignment is where Yaakov needs to go to make his tikkun. And only by living through that and Lavan, and falsehood and lies, which create anger, which are primarily of the ani not being there present to, not being emet to, as in ani hashem elokeichem emet. Your ani can only be elokeichem when it's emet. It's exactly what G-d is bringing you right now and sending you right now, so if you don't have that than you're just going to be angry. So Yaakov goes and becomes what he needs to become there. And only after that, only after you go through anger can you come to Eretz Yisrael. This by the way is why Moshe Rabbeinu lost Eretz Yisrael in anger, this the Maharal explains, that in hitting the rock and expressing anger there was a disalignment. And you can't go into Eretz Yisrael like that. Because Eretz Yisrael is Yis-ra-el, and needs to come through Cana'an, hachna'ah of what is, surrender, hoda'ah, acceptance of being whole will. Only from that can be born the tikkun which allows him to come back to Eretz Yisrael knowing what's meant to be with him, what's not meant to be with him, get the pachim ketanim, and then be able to face Esav and all that false reality and move ahead into all that we saw.
What about mourning?
I don't think that takes a person out of the now. I hear what you're saying, A sorrow for what has been lost.
There's a process in the grieving to go over—
It should be noted that aveilut is not a time for simcha. Avelut is the opposite of simchah. There is a taking of hiatus from the presence of being, in that sense. I hear that.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript:
Last time we explored a certain element of the introduction of currency to the planet by Yaakov. It sounds almost like a side point, but actually it's something significant globally speaking and in context of the story we were involved in. I want to remind us of some of the aspects of what we had been seeing and I want to take it somewhat with us to a different place today. And I'm hoping we'll also get to learn a little Chassidut together. We had explored together Yaakov and Yisrael and Yaakov and Leah.
Something which I realize is important for us to recognize about Yaakov in that transition of the battle--which is an internal battle and external battle in which Yaakov becomes transformed into Yisrael--has a great deal to do with the discovery of his personal realization, by which I mean Yaakov is like the external body. Yaakov is the heel. Literally, his name means "the one who is hanging onto the heel," trying to get around the heel, Yisrael, though it says in the Tikkunei Zohar is li rosh, "I have a head, I have a mind." And in that sense is the exact opposite from Yaakov in terms of the relation of one to oneself. For in Yaakov, the primary relation is to the body, whereas the primary relation is to the soul (or to put it in less spiritual language, the identity, the particularlity the specificity of who he is). It may be a funny way to put it, but see we all share heels. In Chazal, the heel is always the expression of embodiment.
In fact, there is a story in Baba Batra about one of the Chachamim who went into the Maharat Hamachpelah--this is parenthetical to show you that the heel is that way--and he saw the heels of AdamHarishon and they were glowing like the orb of the sun. So the Maharal explains on that passage, well, what the impressive point was, it was his heels. Because that's ultimate embodiment. And that's what Chazal teaches us when they say, in parshat Ekev, that there are mitzvot that a person crushes under his heels. It means you're just in body as primary, and that means that you're ignoring what these mitzvot in their miniscule details might be coming to teach you, because you're insensitive of that, unless you have a very refined sense of who you are.
The more refined a sense of who you are, the greater the detail you will pay attention to when it comes to mitzvot, and when it comes to anything in them. The more refined the identity, the greater the sensitivity to detail. I mean you know that when it comes to music or art, a person who has very refined taste will be very attentive to detail. A person who has a refined awareness of others, so they will be very exquisitely sensitive to the details in the messages that they send, and if a person is finely attuned to their own identity, they become very exquisitely aware around details.
And I say this in the context of what we had been learning last time and that is that Yaakov in going back for the pachim ketanim, specifically, remember that the Chazal taught us, that he went back for the small jars, after he had sent his children and his wives across the river. Vayivater Yaakov lvado.Yaakov goes back and he's completely alone-- that we saw last time, and in that complete aloneness that the Chumash is describing for us is going to become his very clear and refined sense of identity which is so crucial before his meeting with his twin brother for the final clarification.
But the way Chazal describe it very interestingly is in his attentivenes s to the fine detail of the mamon, of the possessions that he has. No, I'm not leaving those behind, those are important. Come on, they're pachim ketanim. No, I'm going to go back and get them. Do you know you're risking your life to go back and get them? Well, what life am I risking exactly? My embodied life? Really, what are we talking about? So of couse, if we're talking halachically, risking your life is dochech, getting your pachim ketanim, etc. But the Chumash is talking meta-halachically, not chas v'shalom anti-nemian, but what I mean is the Chumash is describing something which is a root reality which is that the Tzaddik gives up his external body for the clarity of realization of his internal identity. See, our external reality is a shared given, we all share them, and everyone has a different one from everyone else. But if I ask you how you identify yourself, so if you go deep enough, then you won't identify yourself as the person who's got a beauty mark above her lip whereas she doesn't. That's how we distinguish ourselves from one another. I have a beauty mark and she doesn't have a beauty mark. Or I have red hair and she has brown hair. That's not how we-- when we go anywhere lower than the most overt and superficial ways of identifying ourselves. That's not how we identify ourselves. We'll talk about the qualities that we have, and if we go deeper we'll talk about the values that we have. If we go deeper we'll talk about the vision that we have…we'll talk about deeper and deeper aspects of ourselves of that which we identify ourselves as being.
This is fairly obvious stuff. It's good to be reminded of it from time to time. This is what is being taught when he goes back, because it's relevant. How is it relevant? It's relevant because he's got now a very fine-tuned sense of who he is, what he needs to take with him in the world in order to do what it is that he needs to do. And what really belongs to him in the world. And this is why we saw last time, that Chazal teach us that the Tzaddik gives even greater priority to his possessions than to his own reality. Because his body is the common, and his possessions are a reflection, if they're precise, and by the Tzaddik they're very precise, they are a reflection and an expression of his inner self and of his inner identity.
So have you had this experience? As you get clearer, you start to clear away the junk. It is a really interesting thing, that when you get clear on who you are, what you're about, what you're going for. I'm curious to know how many of you have had the experience that you're coming in out of the fog and you say, right, this is what it's about, this is what I'm for, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, you start clearing off the desk, start throwing out junk…And your relation to your possessions becomes even more fine-tuned. Because there are things that you are taking along and there are things that, just the junk of the past, or is never really relevant to the truth of who you are. You kind of bought it while you were in the fog. So that our relation to these external aspects are a direct reflection of how much clarity internally that we have of who we are and of what we're doing.
This is Yaakov. He has a very exquisite sense of exactly what it is that needs to be with him and what doesn't. And so in his going back there he goes back lvado, alone and becomes very alone, excruciatingly alone. Because the more clear and exact and pinpointed a person becomes about their uniqueness, so the more excruciatingly alone they are. Because there's absolutely no one like me and that's the truth. And we can talk about things we share, but when it comes to the pinpointed sense of li rosh, I have a head, I have something which is my contact point with that which I am going towards. I have a selfhood. So then we really because lavdo. Vayivater lvado.
I say this is important for me to point this out because this transition is the transition which changes him from being the one who is so to speak, after the heel, to the one who has a mind, a head, and becomes Yisrael. This is crucial because the whole world was created for Yisrael,. Bereshit barah Elokim. Bereshit Rashi says, what is Bereshit? Yisrael Bereshit tvuato. Yisrael is His first. Bni bchori Yisrael. My first-born son is Yisrael. What is Yisrael? If I talk cosmically, Yisrael is the element of create, of conscious identity of what this planet is, what this cosmos is, and Yisrael is attached to that, that's Yisrael. And those who join that consciousness and awareness of what this purpose of what this create is about, they join Yisrael. But Yisrael is that, so as Yaakov becomes aware of who he is, he becomes Yisrael, and then he be, so to speak, the first-born, the one that all of the other children will follow, meaning that he is showing the way. (12:13)
You hear, this is so important. This is why he is the only one who can say bishvili nivrah haolam. really The more exact a person becomes in their realization of the precision of their selfhood, so the more truly they can say bishvili nivrah haolam, because the world was made for Yisrael. So the more I am Yisrael, so the more the world is created for me. because then I become the consciousness head of the entire cosmos, to the point which we saw last week, in this almost blasphemous midrash, which has Yaakov almost becoming G-d-like. But that's what happens when he becomes so clear in who is is, so that's when G-d says, okay, now you have become a G-d in the tachtonim. That's not, chas v'shalom, not to say that there are two G-ds, that's exactly the opposite. It's you have become so at one with Me and My will for my desire for this planet, that indeed you will be the consciousness of G-d in the planet, that is with joyous creativity, and I use that phrase advisedly, that's binah, with joyous creativity, you will now bring into realization and manifestation the beauty and the glory of what it is to be the true humanity, the true human being, which is Yisrael. That's when he has ended the struggle and he gets the name.
And then we saw this wild thing and that is that he from there--before we get back to the story of Leah and Rachel, which is so crucial--he from there goes and makes currency. Vayichan pnei hair. And it makes a great deal of sense. Because when you have currency, you have an abstraction from the circumstance of bartering. And wow! You know what happens, You get to the point where you write a letter on g-mail so you get, you know I had a ceratin question in Torah, and when the guy answers you, you get six advertisements for sites that are dealing with different things in Torah. You write to someone and then cling! you have the whole world at your fingertips of this thing which you mentioned which is important to you. Because there is currency, because you have matbeah, now you have a situation in which you have the enitre world that is relating, really to this particular thing that is motzei chen b'ainecha, that you find particularly attractive and interesting to you. That's what he did when he made vayichan et pnei hair, when he made the chen of the city of Schechem, he made it possible that the entire planet would become available to, to the evil people to, but to the Tzaddik who knows exactly what he needs in order to further the expression of G-d's will which he has become perfectly and exquisitely identified with. My gosh! Look what that did! That made the possibility of chen to be realized. If you remember the different between chen and yofi, because … the chen is really the place of the Tzaddik who has that kind of clarity and integirity to know exactly what it is that he's meant to rleate to. When an evil person gets access to e-mail and currency, it's the worst, because for them, it's not that the world was created for me to be channelled, but rather, the world is my possessions. Look at all these possessions, getting more and more bloated and egotistical with those possessions. But for Yaakov, when he has the clarity of becoming Yisrael, it's mamash a different story, And that's what allows him to say to Esav, yesh li kol, I have everything I need. It's all right here. And that's what makes is possible for him to want to make currency, to be mtaken the matbeah.
So this is mamash what Shlomo HaMelech teaches, and this is what's problematic about chen, when he says, sheker hachen v'hevel hayofi. What does it mean chen is a lie and yofi beauty is a breath, a vanity, something that is passing by? It's the deepest thing. What is chen? I can't even translate chen into English. It's the craziest thing like in English, a beauty mark, in Hebrew is a nekudat chen, because really a beauty mark is not really a beauty mark, it's a blemish. But a beauty mark is beautiful in the eyes of the person who's seeing it. Ah, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Cut the garbage! Beauty has an absolute standard! We talked about this on Chanukah. beauty has an absolute standard, symmetrical, fit, clear complexion, we all know about this, but that destroys the possibility for right relationships between people, because the standard has become also the standard for what people are meant to think is meant to be chen.
But the truth is that the blemish becomes nekudat chen for someone because someone likes the way it looks. Chen has to do with your personal experience to it. Which is real when you have exactly of who you are and what it is you are doing. Then your wife will have chen, the place you live will have chen, the things you have have chen, and you only keep them if they have chen, because you are integrous [have integrity--DG] enough to know when they are meant for you or when they're not. And in steps beauty into the picture. Now beauty is a very good thing. But beauty has little to do with relationship. Beauty has to do with truth and what is absolute. And what is a standard that is to be met or not met. Chen is always in the Chumash. Motzei chen b'eynav, lo motzei chen b'eynav, finds chen in his eyes, doesn't find chen in his eyes. It's all relational. Thats why Shlomo Hamelech says, sheker hachen, because sheker is a lie. Why is chen a lie? Because it's not measurable by any set standared. I cannot tell you if this table is motzei chen in your eyes, you have to tell me if it's motzei chen in your eyes. I can tell you if it is yafeh. Because there are ceratin standards for what yofi is. But I cannot tell you if it is motzei chen. It is a very real and crucial point. Because people are always is comparing their mates and their possessions and everything is in comparison, that's why kinah is a result of yofi, which is the world of yefet and yavan, which is just the straight-line kind of television models or cars that fit some-- It has nothing to do with chen, it only has to do with yofi, so everyone is competing and dropping because it's no longer yafeh, because yofi is hevel. Yofi is always passing. Nothing stays yafeh forever. Matter disintigrates. It's hevel, It's like a breath. So chen has no absolute, it's sheker. It's falsehood in a sense, which is the opposite of emet. Yofi is hevel in that it never stays, it's gonna pass. Beautiful today, maybe ten years from now, or however, well he's beautiful in my eyes, So you're talking about chen. That's chen. Very important difference. Money gives you access,--when it's right-used money-- to chen.
What is motzei chen b'eynecha? Now again, if you're an appetite-filled, unclear, grabbing, need-to-be aggrandized and bloated person, so that's dangerous. You don't want that guy having too much money. And he's going to do everything he can to get it. Because he needs more and more and more to satisfy an endless and unsatisfiable [insatiable] desire to feel significant and important. Because the less clarity he has, the less integrity he has, the more he needs to give himself a sense of selfhood and worth. But the more clarity he has, and sensitivity to the exquisite detail of what's shayach and not shayach, of what belongs and what doesn't belong, whatever you give me that's fine, and if you give me money to access more, so then I will build something with it that's appropriate, and has never taken from someone else because I'm lvado, I'm completely alone.
This is why Yisrael is able to only, in a sense, relate to Leah, as we showed last time, that when Yisrael becomes Yisrael --what I just showed you now was right after he becomes Yisrael, named by this other person (or through his internal struggle, or through Esav, or splitting from his identical twin, or his twin brother), so now he has created this currency, …so then when he becomesYisrael as we saw last time, Leah emerges as his only zivug, and Rachel dies.
But this is the Leah who was, if you remember, the first one to bring hodaya into the planet. As I explained to you in Chanukah, which is the holiday of chen, Leah was the first one to be modeh. Her first three children were about he loves me, he loves me not, etc. She was playing with daffodils. Reuven--G-d sees that I'm suffering; Shimon-- G-d sees that I'm hated; Levi-- wait a minute, is he going to walk with me? He will walk with me. Yehudah, now I'm modeh to G-d. What happened? And Chazal taught us she was the first one to do this. Who is this person? This is the first time in the Chumash that someone has done that. No one has ever done that before. This is the most important thing we do in our spiritual relatinoship with G-d. We do it every morning when we wake up, Modeh Ani. What's going on? She's the first one to do that, the Gemara says (on daf zion in Brachos.) And Rashi says, why? Because now I have more than the givens. Now I've become unique. The cheshbon was three children to each mother. Four mothers, three children to each mother. Ding. Four. That's me. That's not a mechanism or a function to bring the right number of children into the world. That's something special I've just been given and gifted with. That's my meod. That, we said, is mamon, so to speak--that's my extra. When she got to Yehudah and malchut, kingship, [then her] independence became possible; she no longer looks at her husband as he loves me, loves me not, she now knows exactly, it's a symbolic. I know she's got only one other kid there.
But there's a principle that Chazal want to teach us. That's something just came into the world. That is someone's consciousness that I have something more than someone else.(Or not so much more than someone else-- that would be the Esavian or beautying way to look at it. Not more than someone else. She doesn't say that.)
She says, yoter m'chelki. More than my portion. Right? I had a certain portion, and my cheleck was supposed to be three. Now I'm in my meod, my more, that's becausehol meodecha, mamoncha, that's my identity. (28:08) There's something about me that's becoming realized as unique and special, that's Leah. Leah brings that consciousness into the world and that is olam habah consciousness. We didn't take this last time. And it's the simplest thing in the world to see this. What are you going to take with you when you leave your body? It will only be your meod. It will only be that which is your unique flame, your unique light, identity, your reality you'll leave that behind. It's your light that you take there to olam habah. Leah is the one who knows olam habah, that's where she lives. So she's the one who brings to the planet this realization of joyous creativity of expression, manifestation and particular identity that is meant to be mine…because olam hazeh is our reality are bumping together, we don't have exactly what's mine, what's yours, what's the common and what's the unique, it's very confusing down here, everyone is trying to buy out everyone else and get their stuff and it's all like contest. And olam habah: forget it, man, there's no kina, no tacharut, there's nothing, there's only what you realized of your unique selfhood in this world. That's what you take there. That's Leah.
And the deepest thing, Chazal teach, is that the consciousness of Leah. They teach it in a mashal about how crucial the clarity about where that comes from is. Because this could be the most egotistical, self-aggrandizing, bloating experience, when it becomes it's all about me. I see Rav Daniel is teaching all about me, I can't wait to get out there. It's all about me becoming myself! That's filth, that's preciously the opposite of what Leah knows. Because Leah is hapam odeh et Hashem. And I'll just tell to you straight up in a mashal, as much as a mashal can be straight up. Chazal say that Rabbi Brechia ben Rebbe Levi taught the following mashal. I'll tell you a story about a cohen. The cohanim get tithes. They go around to the granery, to the threshing floor, and there they're given the tithes. So this cohen goes to someone who's got a kur, a bushel of wheat to give this cohen. He brings out his servants to shlep it out to this cohen, it's a tremendous amount of stuff [wheat] that he's giving him, and the cohen doesn't say anythign to him. So the guy has got these servants shlepping this bushel of wheat down the street, and someone comes out of the next threshing floor and gives him a handful of grains. So he turns to that person and says, thank you. So the guy who gave him the bushel is watching this happen. He says, What just happened? What about me? Why weren't you machzik tovah to me? So he answers him, because you gave me mine. But he gave me his. On this it says, hapaam modeh et hashem. That's the midrash from Bereshit rabah. Astounding. Because what came here is that-- from the gemara all we had was I've gotten more than my portion. She was only self-reflecting. But from the midrash we have an entirely new opening and that is, when G-d gives you your givens. The things that are coming to you, not that we are not to be makir tov, chas v'shalom, we are makir tov that we have five fingers on each hand, we can see, we have bodies, we have minds, thank G-d for all that. But in English, you can't make the proper dinstinction. Because hodaya is about, thank you G-d, you gave me mine, by creating a human being, basically you have a certain level of entitlement to these things. That's by definition what it looks like to be a human being. Ah, but when You gave me of Yours, that's when You gave me more of my expected portion, that's when You gave me the possibility for creative and unique and specific expression. That's You, G-d, You mamash gave me of Yours, You made me godlike,.
That's what the parable's about, not just the nimshal of having more than her chelek, she had the realization of this is G-d coming through me now, it's not about me, it's about me being for Him, of Him, this is such an amazing midrash. It's teaching this entire perspective which becomes the other aspect of hod. Because hod is the glorious light-filled expression of a person's particular identity we're seeing when things become manifest. But hod also means to be modeh, it also means to acquiesce, accept, admit. That's funny, the same word means both glorious, light expression, and to acquiesce, accept and admit, because if it has only the one side of glorious expression, then it is without connection to the very One whose very being is that, glorious and unique expression. (36:00) So Yisrael, who has this depth of clarity and Leah who has this depth of clarity, they are the ones who come together. They are the meeting of the inner reality of each of them in a way in which their uniqueness merges. That's really, in a sense, ultimate zivug, when both members of it are so clear, and then the ultimate of it is when their point of identity is at one with one another. The thing that makes them light up, the thing that makes them uniquely expressed, is at one with one another, it's at full complete identity with each other, that's already the highest madrega of the possibility for zivug and it is, as we explained, e'eseh lo ezer knegdo--the lo is gematria Leah.
So it's important to me to add these elements to us. And there's one other thing to add. We'll explore these together shortly. I just want to point one other thing out. And that is a most beautiful thing that happens later. The end of that little piece with Leah it says (37:52) vtam …mledet it says she stops giving birth. But then, couple of pesukim later, she starts giving birth again, So she's kind of finished this chapter of personal realization, she was hated, she 's worried, she's in pain, he will join me, I'm with G-d. Then something new happens… Remember, please, that Yehudah is the origin of malchut. The king will come from him. His name, Yehudah, is yud and heh and vav and heh, it's G-d's name with a daled. The daled is being the fourth child. The daled is a remez to the most important person who is to come from Yehudah, and that is David. And the awareness of real hodaya, man, you just open up Tehillim, and you've got it. That's what he becomes expression of, in clear, divine expression coming through him, Tehillim is like, that's it. If you ask anyone what book in Tanach, yeah, Tehillim, that's Yehuda, but Yehuda, in this hod-like fashion, and in this malchut which now becomes the personality of all of the other elements now becoming integrated and realized as one integrous [intergal--DG] personhood or being or selfhood, when that's done, then Leah has another child.
That's very interesting to me because what happens is we're back in parshta Vayetze, and we're told in chapter thirty that Rachel gives over her shifcha and then Leah gives over her shifcha and then in verse fourteen, Reuven, her first born son goes for a walk and v …chitim.., he finds dudaim in the field and he brings them to Leah, his mom. Rachel says to Leah, give me them, so she says, you've taken my man, you're going to take my dudaim, too? So Rachel says, you can sleep with him tonight. So Yaakov sleeps with her, she goes out and takes him in and this whole thing here, and she says to ki sachor scharticha in verse sixteen, I have hired you out tonight with the duduaim of my son. Vayishkav ima balayla hu. Then G-d hears Leah she has a fifth child. Who is this fifth child? Well, she names him Yissachar, but if you look in the Hebrew in verse eighteen, so the name Yisasschar is wrongly spelled. It's got two sins, Yisasschar, but you only say Yisasschar, why do you have two? What is that? Why does she call him that? So, she explains, in verse eighteen because I gave my shifcha to my husband. Huh? What are you talking about? You're calling him Yisasschar because you hired him, right? Because you sachor scharticha. That's what she said, come on, own up. But instead, what she said is, the reason I had this child is because I gave him to be with my shifcha. What are you talking about? I believe she is telling us about the world of sachar, about reward. You see, in the overt world of course, sachar scharticha, my hiring you is why I got this child. But in the secret world, the reason why I got this child is because I gave you up. That's what she says. More deeply, I gave me up I gave myself up. I turned over, that Yaakov should be with my shifcha. That's not a nice thing for a woman, she has given herself up. There's a self-abnegation there. It's gonna come through her, not me. Hmm. That becomes the world of sachar, and I'll tell you in the simplest way. That clarity which takes a person to his chelek in olam habah, will only be rewarded with sachar there, if the reward wasn't taken here. If while I was doing it, it was about me getting the pleasure of whatever, the pleasure of ego, or living a meaningful life, or whatever subtle pleasures. That's a really subtle one, that's a hard one to give up. But there are more or less subtle measures of how much you are doing it because of your outer reality, and how much are you doing it because of your inner truth that you're allowing to be realized through you.
So she says, I did this one, not for me. Because I gave up myself, now I have sachar. And that's literally what Yisachar is, yesh sachar…So hear this: She got the Yisachar, by virtue of dudaim. Dudaim are Davidyaim, it's David. The midrash points it out, I have to find it again. Davidaim, in other words, that dodaim, which is loving, is the dudaim, is the dod, which is David. (I guess it got polluted in English, the dude. But in Hebrew, it's dudaim. I don't know if that's true, I just made that up.) So David is this is the world of the sachar that only malchut can know when the expression is one in which is G-d flowing through rather than it being about me. (47:00)
You see here, this is exactly what she says, this sachar here, you know how you get sachar? And Chazal actually say the yesh is actually the amount of sachar that a person gets, it's a funny kind of Chazal, they say, l'hanchila…yesh …mamale, that I will give an inheritance to those who love Me. What's the inheritance of yesh? That I will give you an inheritance of reality. Where? Chazal say in olam habah, that's where you get the yesh, Here that's not where you get the yesh. Here she says, yesh sachar--by virtue of my not having taken for myself here.
So what I'm doing with you today is I'm seeking to fill out a picture for you of why the zivug of Yisrael and Leah are so united, it's so intimate. But the deeper picture of what I wanted us to have really, is how that when it happens for a person when that integrity is realized and when that clarity is had-- of that particular light that is meant to be spoken through me-- so that is the deepest and greatest intimacy with G-d. So much that G-d says to Yaakov, you're a G-d, and the opposite of that is the nachash, who also tells them the same thing. That's why the Rabbis say, if you don't bow down at Modim , then when you die, your spine turns into a snake. Huh? Bleh! Why? Because bowing down at Modim is an indication that I understand that the deeper level of Modim is acquiescence to, is acceptance in front of You, G-d, not giving up my creative expression and uniqueness, but rather that it's flowing through me as an expression of Your deepest will, and my greatest identity with You in joyous creativity which is binah, that's probably the best translation I can think of of aym habanim smaycha. Joyous creativity, that's binah. If you don't bow down, you stand up, then you belong to the other side. But it's not that he [the snake] was saying something completely wrong, he was just doing it out of separation rather than connection. That's all. If you eat from this tree then you will be like G-d. Why? Because you will be able to relate to what's motsei chen b'eynecha and what's not.
I'm going to put that aside for now, but the point is, this is a very deep intimacy with G-d and it becomes when the relationship is one of chen between us. And it's the deep rachamim which is the rachamimn which Yaakov expresses. Chazal say he is the mavriach hatichon, he is the center pull and the center life that flows through all. To bring us back to what we touched upon last time, that he is the center life and the center line of it all, mavriach hatichon the bar that goes through everything and unites it all, that's the unity consciousness that unites it all. Here we're looking at it from the realization of selfhood and personhood that allows for that. It's not going to be some amorphous cloudy, thing, just like the Chazal says, a person that says hallel every day is a blasphemer, Macharef umgadef. (51:55) He's like, you're making fun of G-d when you say hallel every day. People in their overdrive-religiosity, can't take what I was saying before that like, of course, you're supposed to give thanks that you have two hands, two arms, ten fingers well, what do you mean? Of course, you give thanks. No, let's make distinctions, because if we don't have distinctions, then you will not have intimacy as we've learned. We only have intimacy because we have clarity of distinctions. So there is a distinction between hakarat hatov, which is I've been given what everyone has, thank you, and hodaya, which is my special thing, this is where you gave me Yourself, G-d, right? That's deep. That only happens there when there is that realization. Am I repeating myself? I am not sure if I am just saying the same thing over again. Just checking in. (Circles of righteousness) Holy circles.
So I'd like to share with you a piece of Chassidus in which the Baal HaTanya expresses Yaakov and Yisrael and aspects of them. I just want to begin something here. There is a verse in the Parshat Bilaam: (54:41) That verse talks about Yisrael and Yaakov because they both remain. So here: …it remains extant even though Yaakov has had his name changed to Yisrael. Nevertheless, Yaakov and Yisrael remain names that he is called by…and the truth is they are two different aspects in which we relate to G-d. It's the aspect of being a servant and an aspect of being a son, a child. (Quoting the Hebrew verse)…As the verse says, hear me, Yaakov my servant….
See, Yaakov 's experience of life and the so-to-speak externality of our living is the aspect of servant. We've been commanded to perform certain actions, and we are all, in a sense, sort of in common with that. There's things that need fixing, things that need tuning and we're all responsible to make sure for the maintenance of the planet, for the maintenance of society, etc. A servant in his relation to his master, is always being given things to do because there is always what to do. A child, though, will also be given things to do by his father, by his mother, but they are giving him these things to do, but not because they are things to do, but because they want the child to grow. Think about it. The real deep intent of a parent with a child. Look, maybe they need some farmhands around the house, or to get things cleaned up, etc. okay, so you might be functioning with your relationship with your children as servants.
There are servants on various levels. There are servants on the level of, there is something that needs to get done, or there might be servants on the level of I need to feel good about myself, so I need you to look good. That's also a child servant, like you're my little jewel, Henry. What do mean, you're my little jewel? Yeah, I like wearing you on my collar. You better look good. That's where parent-child relationship is one of servant. That's where it goes wrong. But it can be right also, if things just have to get done, but you really don't want a servant for that, so to speak. But then, there's when you tell your child because you want your child to grow and you know if she doesn't clean the dishes, then what kind of person is she going to turn out to be?. And a deep loving parent with their child will always have that as their primary intention and desire, I want you to become the most you can become. I want you to become fully realized. So I'm telling you what I'm telling you because on the chitzoniut, it needs to get done, on the outside aspects. But on the pnimiut, it's because I love you and care about you and want you to become the most you can be. That's the real kavanah of parent-to-child [relationship].
So there is also the bechinut, of so-to-speak of G-d with us, which is Yaakov, which is listen, there is work to be done. The world needs people to take care of it. Get moving. But the pniumiut of Yaakov is through the relationship of G-d to us as ben, as child. Do you know why there is so much work to be done? Because I want you to go out and be the most realized and unique realization of what your particular being is that you could possibly be. That's when I flow into a realization through you, that's why Yisrael's name has G-d's name in it. Because that's also really when a paren'ts flows through the child. Their love. Because really, that's what's coming to expression. We can all own up to that--it's all about us flowing through the child. Of course we want the child to be the most he can be because that's our growing. And when the child directs that and knows exactly where to take that, wow. So then even though, so to speak, on the external vision of it it doesn't look exactly what it is we were looking for. But in the internal we say, wow, nitzchu li banai, my children have defeated me. That's good, I like that. Because, b'pnimiut, they're really bringing out something so deep that you or I wouldn't be able to realize in effect were it not been for them and their particular and specific place. That's Yisrael. Ani bchori, my first born child.
(Questions. I'm an older generation and a lot of what you said to me reaffirms a lot about getting oler. You reach a stage where you better understand yourself, and that brings you closer to G-d because it's accepting who you are and the beautiful parts of yourself. My husband just retired, we were talking about well, what are you going to do with your time now? He says, "I'm going to throw away a bunch of stuff." He doesn't owe himself to his job anymore. He's looking forward to it. As you said, you can't do that unless you know what you need. That's interesting too, that a job can make you need a lot of things you don't really need. My question is when Leah had the fifth child, was this after Yaakov had his battle? ) Before. (So she reached the spot before Yaakov did that she was comfortable with herself and she was OK)
That would be one way to describe it. …I like it when you ask, it's not like I know all the answers.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: Yaakov's internal struggle, going back for the pachim ketanim and the idea of bchol meodecha
Episode Transcript:
Last time we met, we were revealing aspects of Yaakov, who became for us the image of someone whose experience of life is as one organism in which G-d is flowing with life through it all, and his love of G-d is one in which is described in Chassidut as an attachment to G-d which knows atah mechayed kulam: that You are the One Who gives all life. And that experience of G-d as One who is giving all life is the experience in which, in a sense, all belongs to G-d, but not in the same way in which we saw with Yizchak, in which all is indeed G-d, there is no other than Him. The revelation in which He's absolute and unique, in which there's no other existence at all that was the revelation of Yizchak.
With Yaakov, it was the revelation of what's called echad, in which the multiple parts and aspects of a diverse creation are all unified together in one organism, in one unity in which all is participant really in one body, and we saw that was reflected in the way in which Yaakov is known by Chazal to be the one whose beauty is like the beauty of Adam HaRishon. And that beauty which is the beauty of Adam HaRashon, is really the depths of what beauty is, because beauty as it's experienced through Yaakov is very deeply related to truth, because the nature of the truth-aspect of beauty is very important. And we saw that there is actually a struggle between an attitude towards truth, on Chanukah when we met, which is that "aesthetic" is some absolute orientation, meaning that it is touching the fiber of the way things are, you know, and so if something is beautiful, it's aligned with that, and if it's not aligned with that, it's not beautiful. With an experience of life as having ultimate representation or not having ultimate representation.
We'll leave the issues around beauty aside. Yaakov is the one who is able to -touch all of reality by virtue of it being interconnected as one being. And the beauty of Yaakov, the Rabbis say, is the beauty of Adam HaRishon before the fall into the chet, in which Yaakov is actually a personification of Adam HaRishon, and the Rabbis say it also when Yaakov asks for Rachel and he says, give me my wife and I will be with her. So there Rashi says, that's no way for people to talk, who talks like that? Even the scoundrals in the shul don't talk like that? You're talking about getting married, or are you just talking about sleeping with her? So the way the mefarshim explain that is because Yaakov was on such a high madrega of being not divested of body, but experiencing body in a way that Adam HaRishon experienced body, in which the organisimic interconnectedness of all was so apparent, that for him to sleep with her, that's the lashon of zivug, of boah, of I will come into her. Because why? Because we're all one body, so I am really going to be merging with her, it's not really in the sense of a sexual impulse, it means I'm really going to come into her. And he was totally innocent in the way he was saying that. When a scoundral in the shuk says it, it's a scoundral in the shuk saying that. But when it's Yaakov saying it, it's a reflecting of this experience of us all essentially being one.
So we explored aspects of that and I want to continue into one other element which happens in the story of Yaakov which is crucial for us to understand the nature of his relationship with G-d. If you remember, we also had some primary exploration of the way in which Yaakov relates to money and creative output. And what we're referring to later becomes revealed the beginning of the story of Chanukah and with our battle with Yavan. And so we can take something out of this that we are meant to take out of Chanukah, aspects of this which we discussed on Chanukah and which I want to continue to bring out about.
I think we explained that there are three ways of loving G-d. There's vahavta et Hashem elokecha bchol lvavcha, bchol nafshecha and bechol medoecha. And we explained that the way of loving G-d bchol lvavcha is the way of loving G-d of Avraham, with all of his heart, including his yetzer harah. The way of Yitzchak is bchol nafshecha: he gives up his life, there's nothing other than G-d, and the way of Yaakov was bchol meodecha, afilu hu notel et mamoncha. Your love of G-d will be revealed in your willingness to sacrifice even your mamon. Now what would that be? That in sacrificing your mamon would be such a high and profound experience of something that so deeply belongs to you that to give it up is a demonstration of your love of G-d. If your experience of life is one in which you are organismically connected to those things which are your extension, your meod, which is your creative output. And those things which belong to you, so you're experiencing your connectedness to them, not as something which is a tangent, or other, outside of you, separate from you, reality. You are in that. It's like someone has a truly dear creative expression of something which they have made, their life is in that. And that's deeply and profoundly connected to them such that they experience that as being one with them. This is why the Rabbis interpret meod, as having to do with money is also the letters A-d-(a)m, because Adam Harishon experiences all as being what belongs to him and therefore is a very part of his life.
This is the deep meaning of what the Rabbis teach us in the mishnah in Sanhedrin, when they ask, Why was man created alone? And the answer: well, so everyone would be able to say, bishvili nivrah haolam. What is that about? Because the first man was created alone, that means that everyone can say bishvili nivrah haolam? I mean, I wan't created alone, there were lots of other people in the room with me. There were lots of other people being born there with me, so why does man's being created alone indicate bishvili nivrah haolam? And more, Yaakov is the only one who we're told he is left alone, lvado. And that's a crucial depiction, because G-d says, lo tov heyot adam lvado, in the beg of Bereshit. It's not good that man be alone. And yet, when Yaakov is about to meet Esav, so something happens, a crucial event in Yaakov's history. Yaakov, after he prays to G-d and sends the gifts and prepares to go to war regarding Esav, so then Yaakov gets up in the night in chapter thirty-two, verse twenty-two, he gets up in the middle of the night, takes his two wives, his two shvachot, his eleven children, and takes them across the Jabok. And he takes them and moves them over the riverbed, and he takes all that belongs to him. Vyivater Yaakov lvado- but he remained alone. Vyavek ish imo ad alot hashachar. And there was a man that fought with him until the dawn came. …And he saw that he could not defeat him…so he touched him in the hollow of his thigh, and the thigh bone became dismembered in the middle of this wrestling. And in the middle of this mysterious scene, Yaakov is described as the one who is left lvado. So we really have Adam Harishon not only before the chet, but even before he has woman separated out from him. He's completely alone. Assuming he's alone, and again, he's the only one who is lvado since back in lo tov lyhot ha Adam lvado, something that allows him to be lvado. Now, what's worse is exactly what the problem that G-d says is the problem of the lvado, happens to Yaakov. And what I'm referrring to is as Rashi explains, Why is it that… so people might do something very bad, they might say that just like there's one G-d up there, so there's one G-d down here. People get confused. So he must have an ezer knegdo--eheseh lo ezer knegdo,--and then everyone will see that he's like all the other creatures of the planet. That's what Rashi speaks in the second chapter of Bereshit, where that verse is.
(14:47) But let's look at chapter thirty of Bereshit, when Yaakov comes home to the city of Shchem, which is in Canaan, he's come back from padan Aram. …. He does something chendik to the city, he encamps there or does something chendik, we'll see how these things are related. …He buys a field there where has put down his tent. He pays the price. …He makes a mizbeach there….And he called him G-d, the G-d of Israel. Whoa, what's going on here? Who called who? Who's talking to whom? So Rashi on that verse says, not that the mizbeach, the altar, is calling him Elokei Yisrael, but rather that G-d is with him, so he called the mizbeach according to the miracle He has done. G-d has been my G-d--He has saved me.
But then Rashi says, You know what? The Rabbis have a different take on this verse. They say, that G-d called Yaakov an el. That G-d called Yaakov "G-d." Whoa! So on this the Rambam says, Why would G-d call Yaakov G-d? What kind of G-d is He/he? So on this the Rambam says, there's actually a medresh on this that I can't reveal to you because it's a deep secret, but it says that what this is actually teaching is that G-d in Mesechet Megillah, calls Yaakov kel, and in Bereshit Rabbah, it teaches that Yaakov said to G-d, You are G-d in the Heavens and I am a G-d on the earth. Oh no! He says, Yeah, this is a remez to what it teaches, that the image of Yaakov is engraved on the kisay hakavod--on the throne of glory--meaning apparently, that Yaakov indeed is some kind of perfect represenation of the divine in the world. You in the elyonim, and me in the tachtonim, and oh my gosh, this is exactly what Rashi said would happen if someone was left alone! When it says, lvado, so it actually happened and it was none other than Yaakov that did it? What's going on here? What does this mean that Yaakov experienced himself as the divine?
Now understand that Yaakov became alone when he went back to save his money, possessions, his pachim ketanim. On Chanukah we talked about that when he went back for the pachim ketanim, he risked his life, because, as Rashi says that Tzaddikim don't steal, they only have what is truly theirs. And in only having what is truly theirs, it is so dear to them, even more than their bodies are. Because their bodies, well on a certain level to them, compared to what they have come to realize in their lives, money being an abstraction or representation of that, their bodies are like dead matter to them in comparision to what they have creatively realized of their lives. And it's become a life force of theirs which has become embodied by their creative output, and they have their life force in those things which has been made by them. This sounds awfully godly.
If you experience G-d as the One Who is the life force that maintains all that is, and it's all one organism in which G-d's life force is running through it, so, my life force is also moving through those things which I am a participant, a creater of. This is a very deep consciousness, which is one that leads to Yaakov being, in a sense, being alone. What does it mean to be alone? It means that it's all one organism, so there's nothing outside of me. What, there's something outside of me? I mean, we're all living in one divinely enlivened reality as one body which is called in Kabbalah as Adam Kadmon who becomes realized in flesh as Adam Harishon, who the Rabbis say indeed included the entire universe. And what the Rabbis teach us, we accept, so Adam Harishon had that same glorious beauty that Adam Harishon had. [You said that, that not my editing-DG]
He's going back for these pachim ketanim. He's left alone. He's now realizing life as being one organism. And that is a consciousness that leads him to relate to what has become his, belongs to him, as being at one with him. So get this fascinating and deeply troubling phenomennon. So there he is, alone. Vyavek ish imo… He's alone, but someone's fighting with him. But how is it that he's alone, but someone's fighting with him? So the midrashim indicate that what's happening for Yaakov is actually an internal struggle that's goingon. He's fighting with himself., He's fighting with two aspects of himself. In fact, the Rabbis say, Vyavek…(24:10) that this avak, went all the way up to the image of Yaakov which is on the kiseh hakavod, so that now, this avak that is covering the kiseh hakaovd, is the same dust that is being kicked up by the struggle that he's having with this person. So that it's all in one cloud, basically, of dust. It's a struggle that's happening while Yaakov is alone. Yes, and yet there are midrashim that say, oh, come on. I'll tell you who he was fighting with. He was fighting with Esav--Esav's spiritual manifestation. He was fighting with Esav's angel. So was he alone? Was he with Esav?
What happens to Yaakov? The verses tell us that what happens next is that he asks what the angel's name is. The angel says: we don't have names. But you've got a name. --Yeah, I've got a name, my name's Yaakov. --No, not any more. I mean, I don't have the authority to change you name, but as a result of what's happened here, you're going to have a new name now. Your new name is Yisrael. --Why? --Because you have lorded over G-d. (24:54) Ki…elokim, vatuchah, maybe that sounds too radical, so you lorded over an angel of G-d. Well, later we may find that it may not be so entirely radical since Yaakov is being called "G-d" by G-d. So there's something in that name which may be more than we're used to relating to.
But now, the strangest thing happens. Do you remember when the Rabbis say that Leah became ugly, or her eyes became soft, because she was crying so much about having to become the wife of Esav, She didn't want to become married to Esav, so she became married to Yaakov in answer to her prayers, Baruch Hashem. But in pniumiut, she's supposed to be the wife of Esav. Now take a look at this bizarre episode in Vayesehev, the next parshah. Chapter thirty-five, verse nine. So G-d appears to Yaakov. He's now returned from Padan Aram, and He blesses him. So this is how is going to be the realization of how Yaakov gets his new name. So G-d says to him, Shimcha Yaakov? Lo yikareh od shimcha Yaakov, ki im yisrael. Your name is not going to be called Yaakov anymore, it's going to be called Yisrael….and you'll have lots of children, this land is your land… and there Yaakov builds there that mazevah, as he said he would, and they're on their way to Efrata. Rachel starts giving birth, she has difficulty giving birth, and in the trial of giving birth, her myaledet says, don't worry, it's a boy, and as she dies she says Ben Oni--this is the son of my suffering-- but his father called him Benyamin.
Rachel died there, on the way to Bet Lechem. This is all in one parsha--interesting. But that I mean graphically, the way the Chumash is divided. We have a paragraph here. The paragraph begins with Yaakov coming to this place Bet El, getting renamed and then Rachel dying. I realized a most astounding thing.for the first time at Chanukah. Yaakov loves Rachel. But Yisrael has no connection to Rachel at all. Yisrael is married to Leah. And so as soon as Yaakov becomes Yisrael, Rachel's dead. No more Rachel, only Leah. He fights this, In fact, we have in the next verse: he tries to maintain his connection to Rachel by moving his bed in to the tent of the concubine who was Rachel's concubine. But Reuven says, We'll have none of this. Reuven sees right through it and he forces the issue, according to Chazal.
But the point is: that woman who is the woman of the secret life, that woman who is the woman of olam habah, that woman who is the bechinah of eheseh lo knegdo. Meaning, there's ezer, there's knegdo, and there's lo, lamed vav. This it the third madrega, and it's one that Yisrael has of utter and complete belonging. Of living again as one organism. It's the secret life that underlies the overt level of separateness, because in the external reality indeed Yaakov is Yaakov, and he's worked hard, and he's loving Rachel, who's the alma digalyah, the revealed world as we saw in the Zohar, and he's needing to overtake Esav, and grabs his heel, and he's behind him, I'm going to go slow, and eventually I'm going to get there, and all the things we saw about Yaakov and process and externality and a reality in which things are gradually unfolding.
But it's Yisrael who truly lives the secret life which underlies all of reality and makes it echad. So by him it's not ezer, and it's not knegdo, which have to do with Avraham and Yitzchak, as we learned. Here it's the pasuk, eheseh lo, because lo is gematria Leah. She's completely belonging to him in the same way he experiences his possessions. Not in a demeaning sense-- we hear "possessions" and we immediately think domination and domineering. It's not about that. It's real belonging. It totally belongs to him. They have actually become one. He has become lvado. He has achieved more than the androgynous condition again. (What?-DG) That is something which Yisrael only has with Leah. This realization of echad. By the way, it is Yisrael who we speak to when we say, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. And here is a very deep thing: the very first person who said that was Yaakov.
Actually there are two places where that is spoken. One place, when Yaakov meets Yosef for the first time in twenty-two years. It says, Yosef cries on his neck, and it doesn't say that Yaakov is crying, so Rashi says, What the heck was he doing? Why wasn't Yaakov crying? So Rashi answered, he was saying, Shema Yisrael. Wait, who's talking to who? Shema Yisrael, listen up, Yisrael: Hashem Elokeynu, Hashem Echad. Who's talking?
Verse twenty-eight in chapter forty-six, Yehuda is sent ahead of him, to Yosef, to show the way they get to Goshen. Yosef bridles up his merkavah, gets on it to go to Yisrael aviv, he appears before him, falls on his neck and starts to cry. And Yisrael says to him, I'm going to die now that I've seen your face, now that I know you're alive. What? I'm going to die now? Maybe that's why he was saying Kriyat Shema, because he knows he's going to die now. Well, that actually makes sense. Because the other place where Shema Yisrael appear, is in Vyechi. It says that Yaakov wanted to gather together his children and tell them what it's going to be at the end of time. So….Come together, and I'm going to tell you about what's going to be at the end of time. And then, nothing happens. He doesn't seem to have anything to say. He starts blessing them. Reuven, you're this… what happened? What a let down! It was about to happen--that's what we all want to know about, right? Nothing. (38:49) Well Rashi starts explaining. You know what happened, right? He wanted to. But then it disappeared. He thought he was going to have the revelation and it didn't come. However it is. So, he started wondering, hey, what's the deal with my kids? Did they also believe in one G-d? Maybe one of them has gone bad and that why G-d is blocking the revelation right now. He can't see the end of time. So he starts looking at them. Maybe there's a shemetz psul, something wrong with them.
So you know what they say to him? They say, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeynu Hashem Echad. Listen, Yisrael, Dad, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad, only one G-d. So that's interesting. He's the first one to say it according to Rashi, and here we have them saying it to him. And you know what he said? Oh, Baruch Hashem, Baruch Shem Kvod Malchuto lolam vaed. That was his response. That's why we say that too. Because we're like the children of Yaakov when we say that. Shema Yisrael, Hey Yisrael. You're still here hanging on, one G-d. And then we also say his repsonse: Baruch Shem kvod Malchuto L'olam vaed.
Now listen to this. Baruch shem kvod malchuto l'olam vaed, is the letters if you take the first letters of these words, b'Shechem Lo. Baruch Shem Kvod, that's the b'Shechem, and L'olamVaed, that's the lo. We can't go into the whole story of Shechem right now, but suffice it to say that there is a remez here to what the Navi say, what the prophet teaches, that in the end everyone is going to be worshipping G-d b'Shechem echad. In the end, everyone is going to be worshipping G-d b'shechem lo. It's all His. Schechem is like a katef, but Shechem is also a portion, and it's all going to be revealed as His portion. It's all G-d's reality. So that his repsonse then to them saying Shema…echad, is him saying Baruch shem… His malchut is revealed, his name is revealed (in?) all. Forever. So there really was a revelation of the end but it's the end that is here in the present. Because what is the end which is…(This line needs to be recovered) The realization that it's all G-d's manifestation in which His life flows through it all and it's all one body really. But we're used to saying that in space but it's also true with objects. So it's all one body. And so his children say to him, you know what, Yisrael, the ketz you want to be revealing? It's right here. It's all one reality, whether you're looking over time, whether you're looking over space. It's all G-d's so-to-speak body, his manifestation, His name. So he really did reveal the ketz.
The Zohar says, don't think that he wasn't able to reveal the ketz. But how was he revealing the ketz? Rashi says, when he saw that when all of their disparate realities, oh man, did it all go wrong? Where is the echad? So they said, remember all those twelve stones that became one under your head? Because you're experience was of G-d's life force flowing through it all, here we are. We're the living reality of that. That's called knesset Yisrael, Here we are. Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. Ah, Baruch Shem kvod malchuto l'olam vaed. The Shechem, lamed vav, the Leah, the alma d'casa become revealed there as olam habah, literally, olam habah, as the Zohar teaches, Leah is olam habah. That's what he meant when he met Yosef. This makes it a little more personally oriented. Because when he met Yosef, imagine that scene. Must be shattering-- twenty two years his son is gone, his son is dead. He thought the whole thing he was in the world for was shattered. No twelve children. The twelve tribes are gone. There's only eleven of them. Is this rife between his sons irreparable? What's going to be the end of me?
Comes Yosef. What happens when he sees Yosef. My G-d, it's all one. All that crazy stuff when he was gone and away, and they fought, and they tried to kill him, and in the end they sent him away, and he became the viceroy, and now he's going to keep us all alive? Wow, And that, by the way, become Yosef's consciousness, because Yosef and his brothers in this week's parshas, his brothers come to him and can't talk to him and Yosef says, Listen, don't be afraid, you know why? Because G-d has sent me before you to keep you alive. What's that consciousness? That is utter and complete forgiveness. Because it's all been one life working itself out. What, am I going to get angry at my toenail now? It's just like walking me to where I need it to go You people are all fine. You're all just part of the same body unfolding itself.
Yosef inherits that vision, that's really why he's called the ben zkunim. He's the son of Yaakov in his old age. Come on, Yaakov in his old age? He still has a lot of years ahead of him when he gives birth to Yosef. So Rashi says no, because he's the one who has the wisdom of Yaakov. It becomes revealed in him in that realization of the oneness which allows him to give full forgiveness to his brothers, saying, it's just one life working itself out, it's really not about you and not about me as separate entities.
So Yaakov achieved that awareness when he met Yosef. That's why he said, Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. He's teaching himself to be fully realized as Yisrael and now he's become so at one with the life of G-d that flows through, all that he can say is: Yes, You G-d are the G-d in the upper worlds, I am the G-d in the lower worlds. That doesn't mean he rules over the lower worlds, come on. That means that he's so at one with G-d's life in the lower worlds, that hey, is there something between me and You, G-d? It's Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem echad. It's one. I'm not losing the seeing of my children as twelve separate children and I will give them each a bracha. (47:33)
But as it says at the end of the brachos that he gives them, they're all one, he doesn't see them as separate, even though they have different realities. That's lo. That's eheseh lo. It's not a loss of otherness. And it's not a melding into completely unified reality in which the different functions in place of each is not being realized. But rather, the different functions and places are being realized, but they're all being experienced as being part of one organism. You know your heart is different from your elbow, is different from your eye, is different from your ear, but they're all one body. That's not the unity consciousness in which it's all one, nor is it the obliterating of there is nothing but Him. But rather, it's I'm alone. But not a lonely alone. I'm the most together alone I can be. So it becomes the realization of not the lo tov liyhot adam lvado but yivater ish lvado and the yivater is a remez to the meod. Vayivater. it's like he's left over. There's more in the reference to the meod which is his relationship with possessions . And so this produces kadosh Yaakov, who lives in full kiddushin with all, in full relationship with all. It's so intimate.
The Mesilat Yesharim describes in one of the most beautiful passages in the book in which he describes what the kadosh is like, (Kadosh is a reference to Yaakov in the Navi) and he says there you should know that there's an experience of life of the kadosh in which everything that he uses of this world, he sees as being in connection and in communion with G-d's sanctity, and therefore all the stones joined together by Yaakov because he is always attached to the realization of G-d's greatness and life in the world, so everything that he touches in this world is an experience of the godly life which is in it. And so there is nothing that he touches, he goes on and explains. Mesilat Nesharim, chapter twenty-six, he tells us, (51:19), the meaning of sancity, he's so in communion with his G-d he never separates from Him. Everything he touches turns to gold, so to speak, everything he touches is divinity for him, they all are raising up their reality to G-d. He's touching it in it. (He's touching their divinity as he touches these things in their physical manifestation--DG) He doesn't come down when he touches them, he raises them up because he's in attachment with G-d and his contact with them. Everywhere he walks, everything he eats, everything he touches is experienced like that. Now, I believe that's Yisrael. That's the Yisrael of him. And that what it means that Leah's the secret life. That she is the revelation of how all that is is an organism within which G-d's life is flowing and my life is flowing… This is why, when Yaakov becomes Yisrael, Rachel disappears and only Leah remains. And at this point, we have, in a sense, a reconnecting with the life of the child in the womb of the mother in which the child is at one with the mother as it says " ubar yerech imo." Chazal say, fascinatingly the child is like the thigh of the mother when the mother is holding child is in embryo. The thigh! Gee, wasn't that what malach touched on Yaakov? It has to do with the thigh. Why it has to do with the thigh is because the thigh is what in the Zohar is called "gufah" It looks like it's outside the body. Like your body ends here, like at the end of the torso, and you've got these legs dangling there. They look like they're something outside your body. No, no, they're part of your body. The malach is trying to push them apart. That's the fight. Am I a separate entity or am I one organism with him? Am I like the thigh of mother in the womb of her? Or am I some separate reality, like this other side of me is trying to convince me? But what he achieves in the battle there within himself and with Esav which is that other side of himself, and that's why, after he defeats the angel of Esav, which is the consciousness of separateness which is what Yaakov was holding onto the heel of. When he defeats him, so he gets Leah as his wife, who's the exact knegdo, the exact opposite of what Esav teaches, and now he can really be married to her, as he could not have been before.
(Questions: The thigh is the strength of man?) The thigh, Chazal say, symbolizes money. Mamon is l'raglam, is strength, gevurah. (Question: The thigh, the horse, people to take pride in?) The Rabbis teach that when this other side of him hit the thigh, so Yaakov lost control of the money of the world. Money becomes a very crucial issue from that point in time. Very timely. I'm happy to explore this for just a few minutes. In his going back for the pachim ketanim so he's actually not relating to money as power, he's relating to mamon as that which has been my creative expression. It's not power money, it's what belongs to me. So there's a midrash that says that at that point, he lost power money (It says he lost "power money"?) (Laughing) Well, no, they really didn't say it like that. The ruling over the world through mamon. Yosef regains that. I have to look it up, B"H.
See, money is a whole subject involved, and use of mind. There's a lot going on there. Money is really in a sense, the first abstraction. Money is a unifier. We're used to experiencing money as being a divider. And that's what happens when people get greedy and start hording money for its own sake. But the deep truth is that money is the unifying force for the planet. It's quite amazing. The Rabbis actually teach that money began with Yaakov at Shechem. When it says Vayichan et pnei hair, after his battle with Esav's angel, and his battle with himself, he encamped in front of the city. Rashi says he made it chendik. He did three things for them. He made for them shuks, he made for them places to wash, and he made for them coinage. Meaning that no more barting. They were actually thrilled that these Bnei Yisrael had showed up, because the midrash says they had a lot of manufacturing but they didn't have anyone to sell it to.
So enter the Beni Yisrael, and we got this new big market now. What's the new big market? Yaakov and his children (inaud.) (1:01:03) Rashi says, we're going to make a lot of money here. But he says, it's not going to work without coinage. Let's abstract objects into their, so to speak, life-force. And that's what mamon is, it's abstracted into its life force and so now that I have this ten-shekel coin, which I earned by talking to you for an hour or however, so now, I can take that life force and I can buy myself a package of mentos or a clementina. Really? And that's what happened? Yeah. It became abstracted into value, and it enters into the world of mind. And now that it enters into the world of mind, I can reapply it into some other object. It's the great unifier. And it gets more abstracted until nowadays… initially it was a coin with some metallic value with the impriture of some Caeser or someone on it, and then that impriture became more valuable than the value of the coin, then not so long ago they said, the heck with the value of it, let's just put on the impriture. And that's when silver dollars go out. But it's the equivalent of some gold that we got at Fort Knox and if you really want it, you can go to the bank and we'll give you a piece of the gold that's in Fort Knox for that coin, or what do you need the coin for, it might as well just be a piece of paper! With a picture of someone on it. Until evenutally you can't even get it out of Fort Knox. Now they're talking, you don't need paper and you don't need coins. You just need pixels on a screen and all becomes one big marketplace. And it's truly marvelous because life force has become completely extracted or, it's completely horrific when it becomes power. To lord over one another rather than connecting point to interact through. That's why the real tikkun of money is in the chen, where it says, vayichen et pnei hair. It's in chen. What do you really care about? Don't tell me what you want, that's lording over. What has chen for you? So it could be that you need to work, and then abstract that work into a coin, and then chen, instead of I'll give you a banana if you give me an orange, or hoe my garden. We're going to abstract it now. It could be anything and the expansiveness and connectedness of all that is becomes manifest in money. You can buy anything anywhere. And now it's become impossible. The markets of the world have become tearing because of this. It can be anywhere. There people in China working for nothing producing computers so that these guys in DesMoines are out of work, what's going on there? What does that have to do with me? Well, there's only one life force interconnecting everything, now, isn't it? I don't really look at it that way-- they're taking away my money.
You can see how this shift is so ready by abstracting, Yaakov introduced that with money. So Esav, you know how you're going to live money? The leg, which represents money that's Chazal say both in the Zohar and when korach gets killed and everything that's by his legs. So Rashi says, What is everything that's by his legs? That's all his money, he was very wealthy. That's by his legs. Because what stands a person on his legs? Possessions. It's his money. But the pniumius is the legs themselves because it's what's outside you that causes you to walk around from place to place. So Esav or this malach is coming and saying, it's not you, it's separate from you, and you can pick it up and whomp people over the heads with it. Separate from you. That becomes the gid hanasheh. That's going to take a long time Yaakov says, until we come to that realization. But that day is going to come, that there is one G-d. Vyom ha hu… He and his name will be one. Yihye, Yud-key-yud-key, leaving that aside. And then I'm going to be coming up to Har Seir and you hairy people who think it's all outside. (1:07:15)
Yeah, it's very relevant now. Everything's teetering because of this crazy and disgusting greed that is the venom of money ultimately abstracted to the point of people not having homes, because they gave them up for money, I guess, I don't know, there are these double, triple, quadruple mortgages, houses people couldn't possibly ever pay for. The whole thing collapsed-it was just greed. It wasn't like the system needed to collapse. Crazy. And look at the way the tentacles reach everywhere. You wouldn't have that if it were just a bartering world. Scratch my back, and I'll give you a piece of my corn. It limits how many interactions you can have around that. But now the whole planet becomes like a big brain. With infinite interconnects that are producing the picture of the planet and the interrealitying nekuda is money and mind. I wonder if it had been Yisrael who had been the m'taken mamon. Maybe that wouldn't have the risk of such devolving into what it became. (Yosef came a little close to that…making a system around wealth and distribution..welfare in Egypt) You're absolutely right and a lot of the playing with the money that Yosef does with his brothers is around that. Do you think it's about the money? Here's your money. Take your money back. Gee. Should we put the money back.. Eh, your money got to me, don't worry. Because money in the hands of people like you is going to become a contortion of the way money in the hands of a man of yesod is. It's probably not going to be connecting for you, it probably will be the point of divisiveness. Here, take your money back. It wasn't about that for me. Yeah, there's a great deal of teachings about money that Yosef is doing to the Egyptians too. Finally they run out of money. He's got all the money. (Laughing) Whatever.
Jews and money, it's no small thing, it's no mystery. It's like ultimate tikkun or ultimate descent. Can blow it or make it. The goyim have always know that. The money is with the Jews, Rothschild. Madoff. He's small time; big time damage. (Inaud) Threw it out? Whatever it will be, just didn't own property, (inaud) couldn’t so they just became money people. And it becomes the image of the abstraction because money is the abstraction. It becomes this abstract ghost people that holds the money. It's not simple. Because there's really great tikkun that's embodied there. All these things of great tikkun have the potential for the greatest disgrace.
(Questions: Esav and his angel. It's another consciousness. Esav is another aspect of Yaakov. Two aspects of one person) When he gets a new name, he's evolved into a new person) (My question is Esav-oriented. What does it mean that Leah was supposed to be Esav's wife. You haven't talked much about who he is.)
He certainly complicated the picture. In the Kabbalah, Esav is the ultimate separateness, the ultimate separativity, I don't know if there would be a word like that. Origin of the zayin malchim kadmachim, the seven primordial kings, of which said, I will rule. He's ultimate hierarchical consciousness in which one stands above the other and there is no one unifier. He is like a bunch of hairs in their separate follicles.
(And Leah…) What would it had been had Leah been married to Esav? What tikkun might have occurred? (Or worse, he could have taken the strength of the secret world and destroyed it and abised her and this awful thing).
It's not until allof the umot haolam share in this realization of Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hshem Echad, that tikkun will be achieved. This is what Rashi says, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, the G-d who is known only to us to be the force behind all, now, and not by the umot halom, Hashem Echad, in the echad they will all be calling him Shechem Echad, they will all be worshipping Him in one chelek, and calling him by one name. That's how Rashi reads phsat in the verse. So ultimate there is some kind of marrying here, of them to that otherwise, there cannot be full realization of Hashem's name in the world, without the umot halom coming to realize it too.
(It's no big deal that Yaakov's children might get it, but what about Esav?) Shechem is a very significant place. (How do we apply all these Torahs to our political and financial reality today?)
I don't know that I'm a fully realized human being. I'm far from it, I know that I'm not. There is something about a knowing belonging. It has many hashlachot, certainly greed is not among … kirvah is not one of these… of one who has this consciousness, I wish I did live it, I have glimpses of it.
How does it come down to the political realities? Should we be whomping our way in there and regaining control in there? Is that what it's about? I don't see it that way. I don’t think it's a matter of using force in any sense. It is a matter of shifting consciousness. It really is. Once the British person in charge of Palestine (Chamberlain?) called Rav Kook in and said he heard that the Jews planned to take down the mosque and put up their Temple, is that the plan? So Rav Kook said when G-d will be revealed and the Messiah is here, the Moslems will take it down themselves.
(Back to the money issue. The thing that's going to get us over ourselves and help us to get to the place of connectness of finances and money is that sense of oneness of Hashem Ehcad?)
I think so, that's what tzedakah is about, that's what finding someone a job is, that's what sharing wealth is about, a consciousness of abundance…
…
(Kabbalah Center: Money. Is the intention G-d or is the intention youself? Are you using G-d for yourself?) These are life works. Is having G-d's name present always, as the one who is mchayeh u…hakol, who is enlivening and bringing into reality all, having the name being something that we can hold and being focused and contemplation on that. That is something that makes the shivyon of all reality alive in a way in which it is all equally his and He is the chariot (Shiviti Hashem lnegdi tamid) Which has the sense of both the placing before and holding equal in His name. But it's l'negdi. That's the Jewishness of it. It's the manifestation of things in their separate isn't G-d. He is enlivening them all equally. But they are alive. They are real. As opposed to Yitzchak consciousness which is also true consciousness, there is only Him. Shviti Hashem involves the negdi, the knegdo of otherness. And that involves meditating on His name, realizing it in body and in life in what you meet. And it doesn't mean being a pauper either. It's not a sin to desire success and full realization of things we've been given in His service.
When the focus becomes the mechanism of getting those things. Like Chaya was saying, if I use the mechanism, then it's going to come my way. When the focus is on the mechanism and not on the context--the context being that it is all in His service--that's when things go off, because you're just focusing on the means, and it just becauses mechanical. And that's just about me. That's the leumat ze. Lvado. That's the lo tov liyhot adam lvado, when it's all about me, when it's a consciousness instead of bishvili, that the world is in a relationship with me for me, rather it become haolam sheli, the world is mine. That's an Esav consciousness. That's why Esav hates mother. Chazal say the reason why Rivka never gave birth again is because he tore up her uterus on his way out. He hates mother. Because she is the place of embeddedness and consciousness of it's one organism.
Olam Habah is all devoted to him and all His life force flowing through it and you too. So he's the antithesis of that and therefore the antithesis of Leah and we haven't worked out how they are supposed to live together. He's the antithesis of that consciousness of olam habah. That's the depth of what Yaakov basically says to him, you just want olam hazeh, because you want to own it all. You don't want bishvili, you want to live yesh li haolam, that I own the world, not that the world is for me. See, when the world is for me, in right consciousness, that creates the responsibility of wow, this belongs to me, literally, it's one pathway. We're in a shvil toghether. I'm guiding it and it's evolving by my doing.
(Esav is focusing on the microcosm and Yaakov is following on the macrocosm) It's not just about a bigger picture, it's a different picture.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: The "bishvili" consciousness as being dreamed.
Episode Transcript:
So during the break, Chaya pointed out how much of the consciousness of the clal is joined in sleep and dream. And how what’s embedded in reality is found out sometimes when you go to bed. And the embedding of one and another is something like a mother sleeping with a child, a couple sleeping together, the Zohar actually tells about Yaakov, he was going to sleep there in, as it were, G-d’s bedroom, going to sleep allows him to connect with the pulsating common life of all things. So the Rabbis actually say that here we learn that a couple should turn the light off, ki ba hashemesh. G-d turned the light off. So that kind of intimacy, sleeping, etc. common and connectivity with reality, that’s its own beauty and place to visit to be honest. Just go to sleep, as Chaya suggested…
But that’s having to do with our connection with the divine. In our connection to one another, also there is a very deep place of work in going to sleep, and that is actually relating to the things happening to you as if it happened to you in your sleep…What happens when you experience life as if you’re asleep? There’s a higher wakefulness that happens. And I’ll tell you what that higher wakefulness is. So the guy scratched my car and walked on by and said, “Yihyeh b’seder, al tidag, ta’azov”, So what would the experience of that be if it was in my dream? If it was in my dream. so that would be a curious thing, so what does that come to teach me? Because when I’m asleep and dreaming him scratching my car and saying “Yihyeh b’seder, al tidag, ta’azov”, so then I hear a very different voice. I hear what’s happening inside me, or the message being given me from a higher consciousness, saying “Yihyeh b’seder, al tidag, ta’azov” and now all of a sudden it’s a different voice because I’m dreaming it. And the reason is because I’m touching the life force that is the unifying organism life force which is running through all of those dreams I’m having, which is me.
So if bishvili nivrah haolam, so then all of those things that are happening are for me. And one way to contact that is actually going to sleep and dreaming them. I’m not saying that all interaction with life will become a dream, but there is a level of being conscious of those things being made out of a dream. And then what would that teach you, the dream? So the exercise would be to recall a situation, a difficult one, a troubling one, especially if it involves another person or circumstance, and then to sleep on it, and then to dream it, and then to give an interpretation to that dream, and to see what comes up from that.
(Chaya: Just to add the point. Bishvili being the broader story that I’m just a part of. But it’s in dreamtime that we activate the collective unconscious. So the dreams that we dream are part of the story of the whole…To recognize that this is part of the whole. This is the story of all of us. And also for me, I’m thinking, how do I want to go about this visualization? I’m drawn to putting my hand down and allowing my body to rest. I really liked all the material in here about how Jerusalem is about resting. Our bodies are able to give it up and let it rest. Just experience that in your body the connection between the body needing a state of rest and that accessing this place of collective unconscious and this place of the higher consciousness of “all is one” … )
I’m going to share from Torah from that. In your description of how it’s almost as if in your dreaming of this event or this set of events and it becoming out of order and no longer consecutive as they had been in the present reality, in “real life”, it’s almost sounded like you began to experience yourself as being in someone else’s dream. In other words, this dream here that I’m in, there’s a secret story-- I heard you say-- and that actually might have a different order in it that the overtly experienced story.
There’s another story going on here. There are many bishvili nivrah haolam’s. Even when I’m part of someone else’s bishvili nivrah haolam, I’m still part of my own bishvili nivrah haolam. The dreamer is so perfect in his dreaming, but the disorder of it, I heard you experience as an indication as a different story that you were told in that set of circumstances. This is very deep in the context of Yaakov in his specific relations with Rachel and Leah, because the Zohar teaches that Rachel is the revealed reality, and Leah is the dream. Leah is the covert reality, the secret reality. And this is what the Zohar teaches, that she, Rachel, was so beautiful, but Leah had soft eyes. I’ve seen many interpretations of “soft eyes”, but I’ve never seen why it stands as in contradiction to or in distinction from her beauty until we realize that her soft eyes are like, when a person ceases to see the spirit in a situation, or the spirit of a person, or the aura of a person, or the aura of a plant. “Let your eyes go soft”, the instructions always say. So, letting your eyes go soft: the beauty is not the apparent yafay toar of Rachel, but there is a different subliminal beauty that is present. That’s the inner story of this plant, the inner life of this person which is radiating.
So her soft eyes are like an indication of an embodiment of the dream or the “gone to sleep” reality, and this is why, so ironically, in the story that Yaakov thinks that he is working for Rachel. He’s taken seven years out of his life, volunteering to work for her for seven years—which is a kabbalistic thing, because Rachel is the malchut which comes at the end of all the events, she’s the seventh, the manifest reality. So he says, I’m going to work for her for seven years, but as it turns out he was actually working for Leah….because she’s the secret story. That’s why in the end she goes into the cave with him. She lives with him in death. And Rachel stays in the external reality of the overt story.
A deep thing that the Maharal teaches: at the end of time, like Yitzchak, Rachel is going to come from a whole different perspective. She is going to come to G-d, the midrash says, and she is going to ask for rachamim on the Jewish people. And she says, “I gave up my husband for (inaudible) another woman. And I did it so that she shouldn’t be shamed and embarrassed, and I didn’t have jealousy in my heart. So you G-d, when they betrayed you, shouldn’t you be able to hold that too, like I held that there would be another woman that I’d be sharing Yaakov with? So G-d says to her, okay, you can stop crying. Yesh sachar l’gevulatech. So the Maharal says, Rachel is the embodiment of a lived reality of multiplicity, when the story, so to speak doesn’t fit together. Where all the parts and pieces are not part of one dream; they are all of these different events that are happening, which is how most of us are experiencing life. It’s the overt story. That’s Rachel. She’s olam hazeh, she’s the … galia, the Zohar says. She’s the revealed world. But the revealed world is experienced as many powers, many forces, many lives that are disconnected an unrelated. So because I’m experiencing life that way, I know about shniut, duplication or multiplicity, so I’m telling you, G-d, that’s what they were living. They didn’t experience you in your oneness so readily. That’s why they went after avodah zarah and false (piece/peace). It’s like in life we’re experiencing those things as if they’re real and they’re not. Because they’re just G-d’s life being expressed through them, but only Leah knows that, not Rachel. The Rachel consciousness doesn’t know that. So Leah is the one who knows that, she’s the sleepy one, so to speak, she’s the one with the soft eyes, she sees reality in its blur, where the contours of it are not the definitive features, and so she dreams.
And he meets her at night. Vayhi b’erev. And when the day comes v’hineh hu Leah. The Zohar says. V’ineh hu. Third person. Because he can’t really experience her in the second person, she remains like the third person, as opposed to Rachel, she’s in the first person, atah, you. That’s what the Zohar teaches on daf kuf nun dalet. So she’s like the dream, she’s olam habah, when the hamtakah comes in binah. The sweetening comes in binah when it’s like olam habah and you see like all this was, what the secret story was, (“Hayinu k’cholmim”—DG) and experience that unification.
This, I believe, is a secret we didn’t discover about last year, but the verse that says about man finding his wife, eseh lo ezer k’negdo, “I will make him a help contrary to him,” so we talked about the ezer and the k’negdo, but we have not talked about the lo, the lamed vav—it’s totally yours. You realize this life is really your dream. It’s totally yours, and you know that by touching life as G-d’s dream. The common life force behind all things. And the common life force behind all things is living this reality, manifesting this reality that you’re experiencing now for yourself. Because it’s all in His dream, so to speak. And it becomes completely and totally yours. That’s Leah, because the gematria of Leah is lamed vav. Dreaming it. That’s Aym habanim smeachah, the Zohar says, that’s the joyousness, az y’maleh s’choch pinu. (Now you’re mumbling something that you want to talk about and you’re holding back.)
Ezer knegdo.. completely yours and G-d, as it were, is completely yours, and you’re completely yours. It’s like the tamim. I’m not blaming, I’m not accusing any more. I’m not distancing, I’m not disconnecting. That’s the lo, the ezer k’negdo. That’s the level of the or haganuz, of the hidden light that G-d hid away because the reshayim would abuse this consciousness because they would take control of the hidden story. So G-d had to hide it away after thirty-six hours. Which the Bnei Yisaschar, says those thirty-six candles of Chanukah is when the dream comes out for a moment. The dream that we’re dreaming—wow! it can really be!—and then it gets hidden away again. That’s the thirty-six candles of Chanukah, that’s Leah… that’s bachan v’yitchanen lo.. okay, that’s when Yaakov went back…
The point is that a full meeting with reality as it is, that’s what the tamim is able to do. He touches it all because he’s gone to sleep, he’s touching the dream reality. Now here’s the deep catch. The midrash says that Rachel was very modest. She’s tsnua, and because she was so modest, so Shaul who didn’t reveal that he’d been appointed king was modest, and Esther, who didn’t reveal where she came from, was modest, because they all come from Rachel. They all came from that line. Mmm. What was her modesty? So the Gemara says, her modesty was, that she revealed the signs. She revealed the signs that Yaakov had entrusted to her, so that he would know that it was her and not Leah. Because the midrash says that she told Yaakov about the plan, so Yaakov said, let’s make up signs a private sign, simanim, between us. So what was her tsniut? That she revealed the simanim to Yaakov. Huh? How is it tzniut that revealed the simanim to Yaakov? So everyone gets very confused by this Gemara. Isn’t tsniut about her hiding something about herself? No, her tsniut is that she hid her sister so that her sister shouldn’t be shamed. She allowed him (not her?—DG) to live that secret life. She covered Leah over by giving her the signs. (Chaya: And her sister’s just a part of herself anyway). I don’t know how much Rachel is that. Maybe.
I just have this image here that she’s hiding Leah so that the secret life can be lived out. Because had the secret life been exposed, then Yaakov would have taken control and [ would have said,] like No! So it has to remain very protected. This is a very deep thing, because people mistakenly try to skip over the Rachel stage of life, living it and experiencing it in all its pain and travail. He talks to Lavan, and he lets him know. You can’t skip that over. He feels the pain and the betrayal, he feels it, it’s all there for Yaakov. If he were to skip that over, [saying]oh it’s okay, it’s fine, that wouldn’t have been the real life. It has to be lived fully. As soon as the secret life comes out, you blow it. Because you can’t live the secret life consciously. And you try to take control of it, trying to explain it. It’s very complicated being married to two women. But that’s what it is, it’s having both. That’s the consciousness of ekah. If you lose the details, if you lose the order of the life, if you’re already in the dream, it’s like holding both, going up and down the ladder…
(Inaudible question) I’d love for you to answer that. It’s ratzo v’shov, I see, I know this person is teaching me something, and I know he’s in my dream, and I know that it’s a dream that G-d is dreaming and I know that it’s His life force that’s maintaining us all at once, I know that. But I also know that I also live in the world of choosing in which I respond to that person, not as my teacher, but as one who needs to be taught. And…to live both of those simultaneously is a truly enlightened state. Like I’m living them both. I’m responding, in the responsiveness of Yaakov…in full responsiveness, but I’m responding in [tsnius?] like I’m not in control of this, I’m living the reality as it is, which is being dreamed by G-d, Who is giving it its life force at every moment. Then you’re in echad. Then you’re in unified consciousness in unity consciousness. It’s all a dream. That’s the next level of the meaning of mechila, of chalom. It’s the same letters. (There’s a heh and a yud) Oh, stop being a shtickler. The root of machal, is the same letters as chalam, and that’s really what happens. That’s when you’re dancing a dance, (machol) everyone is thriving and writhing around, everyone is part of this dance, a circle, which is atid lavo. Which G-d is going to make with the tzaddikim in atid lavo, where everyone is in a circle (Dance of duality) No, that becomes a dance of singularity because it’s a circle. Like everything is equidistant from G-d. That’s in the end. Yaakov is not there. Yaakov is the line still. The dance is another madrega.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: The beginning of Yitzchak's love is in binah, Yaakov's love is in the experience of G-d through Shema Yisrael and Baruch Shem K'vod, etc.
Episode Transcript:
…[Thanks to] a great convergence of events, that we can meet on Yud Tet Kislev, I’m very happy about that, in the context of where we were holding last time, I guess thanks to your question, we continued farther than the class had actually ended…
[I want] to touch some of what the Admor HaZakeyn offered as a teaching on two experiences of longing for G-d, which are reflected in two aspects of being a bride, being the kallah of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. The word itself means two different things. It means both longing, as in kaltah nafshi, and also it means a absolving, as in kilayon. These are two movements of the soul in pining for G-d, and those are the two meanings of the word, kallah, which is being reflected in the way Knesset Yisrael is living the love of G-d throughout Shir Hashirim. And if I recall correctly, we saw that the movement between these two kallot actually creates a song in the vibration and the oscillation of these two movements. Like if I begin to move my hand quickly enough to begin to produce a sound—like when you hit a guitar string—this vibration produces sound and song, so the song that’s produced is the Song of Songs, and the root of all song, is this oscillation between the complete abnegation of the soul and G-d, the ratzo, and the shov, coming back here to live in this world, with the consciousness of the longing for G-d, which is the other aspect of kallah.
We primarily have been talking about Yitzchak, and I wanted to go back to that to briefly remind us of how Yitzchak’s experience of how all is G-d was a very profound reflection of something which is called the aspect of the yechid, “no other than.” He is the only one. “He is the only one” led Yitzchak to be able to, so to speak, insist upon G-d’s forgiving us. Because G-d, you know, we’re just a pile of ashes. You are our life. And when Your life is removed from us, we’re still a pile of ashes, and even that is generous. Giving us even that level of reality in which G-d has, so to speak, removed Himself from us. And so Yitzchak pointed at the end of time to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and says to Him, “Of course you must give them mechilah.” That was something that we try to take into an avodah for ourselves, and we a little bit jumped the gun on it because really Yitzchak is the bechinah of mechila that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is mochel us, and looking at us as being the chalal that he has so-to-speak vacated, but hasn’t really vacated.
Yitzchak, though, in his return to the experience of human reality, becomes the greatest lover, ironically, and this we spoke about in a previous segment of these teachings, that Yitzchak is the first appearance of love between people, whereas Avraham Avinu is the love of G-d, and has apparently very little to do with love between people. He has to do with chesed between people, but that’s something else. Yitzchak is the first appearance in the Chumash of love for his wife. And the Chumash describes that he loves his wife.
Now it’s crucial to realize that in Parshat Chaya Sarah, the profound story about him going to get his wife, is that…when Yitzchak is out in conversation, “v… besadeh…” He takes Rivka into the tent of his mother, Sarah, vayikach et Rivka, and he takes Rivkah, vayikach, that very first word that G-d used when G-d acted upon man in that primordial moment, when G-d had to take man with kind words and temptation. Vayikach. Et Rivka vtehilo l’ishah. Note, first it says Vayeviehah… he brought her into his mother’s tent, Sarah’s tent, then Vayikach… what’s new? What’s changed? Now he’s in the kichah and all that means, her heart being there also, not just her having come there. Vatehih lo l’ishah, a third level, she’s now become his woman, v’yiahvehah, and he loved her. V’nachem… that he is consoled over the loss of this mother.
So there is much to say about these verses, but I just want to point out that in our context, that really what’s happened is Yitzchak’s return to this worldly consciousness comes through binah. That binah is the aspect of differentiated and separated-out thinking. Whereas chochmah is the whole picture, so to speak, binah is separated out and progressive thought. So hear this: When Yitzchak returns from the experience of there’s nothing but G-d, so ironically, the one who it’s hard to identify the love of G-d with, because we also saw that his experience of G-d is of deveikut, is a full and utter communion in which there’s nothing other than G-d, when he is in his shov of coming back, passing through as we’ll explain momentarily how that works, so then he’s just totally astounded at the fact that there’s people here, there’s separate realities here, there’s a mamashut, a substance to all of this, and he lives with complete reverence for each individual expression of life and material in this world. It’s so marvelous. It’s such a pele, and he knows that as G-d’s great love. Because there’s absolutely no reason why there would be anything here at all. Only G-d’s ahavah, that there should be here a materialized reality in which people would experience their lives as separate and disparate and other, so to speak, than G-d. And so he has ultimate and complete respect for that. It’s ironic: with G-d, it was complete deveikut, and the love there, it’s barely present because for there to be love, there needs to be a lover, but he’s complete mitateha, yachid, but in his shor he comes back and sees every person as a yachid, as an absolutely and utter uniqueness, like with G-d, his experience of G-d is yachid, so his experience of every other human being is yachid, of uniqueness, and that’s why Yitzchak is called “yechidecha” at the opening of the Akeidah. Because he knows ultimate uniqueness, because he’s touched ultimate uniqueness in G-d, who is the ultimate unique One, there is no other like Him, for there is no other reality like him at all. So you hear this? How the same word has the power to be nothing but Him, and there’s nothing but you. I’m sure that the most loving words a person can say are, There’s no one but you. Do you hear that? So Yitzchak lives that and embodies that and actually becomes entitled, yechidecha, it’s the third (first?) time that word appears in the Torah. And therefore when he meets his wife, he can say to her, you’re my only one.
And he takes her into the tent, which is the tent of binah, because now rather it being the vision of chochmah, in which the all, in which Avraham Avinu, on the right side of the chart, the expansiveness, the gedulah. On the left side, is where love appears in the aspect of yachid. The mother love. Mothers far more than fathers have this connection with the child in which every child experiences the mother like being toward him as you’re my only one. This is a real aspect of mother love. It’s an aspect of specificity that comes from the left side, so to speak, the gevurah side of the chart. That’s why binah is the place of the hamtkah of din. Din can be separated into dividing, but when it goes up into binah, as we saw in hanotain lsechvey binah, it becomes connective. You’re my only one, and we live as a connective tissue between us. Because mother have the experience of child as having been yereh imah. Chazal say that a child in embryo is like a limb of the mother. She has had the experience of the connective tissue, so to speak, and now when she expels him in contraction, and that is what it’s called in English, the translation of the tzimtzum, and that’s what they should have called it, instead of hitkabtzuyot, the should have called it tzimtzum. Then the contractions, then she expels him, and forces him out to take his place in the world, and continues to see him as you’re my only one. You know those moments after birth, the mother’s looking at the child, she says you’re my only one. I don’t think that there’s any moment that can compare to that. And it’s a good thing that B”H most of you shouldn’t have to be drugged after giving birth. To be aware and conscious and look into that child’s eyes when he has that experience of I’m the only one. It really is, and that Chazal really say, make sure that your child nurses from the left side first. Why? Because it’s the place of binah, (It’s also where your heart is) So that binah, comes down through gevurah and ends in hod. All that side ends in hod. And this is very clear to those of you who have been enjoying these explorations since last year, but I can include everyone, and that is that Aharon is hod because he is the ultimate lover of the briot. Aharon ohev et habriot. So that the Zohar asks a deep question, and the mefarshei Hazohar wonder. Some places in the Zohar it says that the root of love is chesed. And in other places in the Zohar it says that the root of love is binah.
So the mefarshim wonder, hmmm, where is the root of love? So I want to claim that the root of love of G-d is in chesed. And that the experience of the oneness of reality is all in kinship with Him, but the root of love of man is in binah, because that’s where the expelling of an other into standing on his her own two feet happens, and it comes down into individuation in gevurah, and the appreciation and gratitude and ability to be makir tov, which is in hod, which is why we [incomprehensible–Aharon as so much the man who is called in English he’s] ---people, he empowers them, and that’s how he brings people to forgiveness is that he empowers them…
When Yitzchak meets Rivkah, so the place he takes her, so that it not be just the place of din, which is the place of her on the camel, if you remember… Now he takes her into the place of his mother, which is binah, and there he loves her. So the Zohar actually states mefarshim in the Chumash, that the place of the beginning of love is in binah. That’s the love of another person.
So Yitzchak finds consolation for the love that he had with his mother, in which in her eyes, of course, he was the only one, and in fact he was the only one, he gets consolation by being the only one in her eyes, and can give her the only one being in his eyes. In fact, he is the unique among the avot, never marries anyone else, never sleeps with anyone else. Only Rivkah. Only her. That’s the bechinah of yechidcha. And in terms of the divine experience, it comes from the experiencing G-d as yechido shel olam. Even the shel olam is stating too much. Yechid. Even very dear things about Yitzchak which I want to return to the Baal Hatanya for guidance in, for the rather odd phenomenon of “from yachid we go to echad”, meaning from Yitzchak, we go to Yaakov Avinu. And we want to come to know more of Yaakov Avinu’s experience in his relation to G-d which is different from that of Avraham Avinu, and different from that of Yitzchak, and it has to do with something which the Torah describes as when he’s leaving Israel, and he has to go into galut but he’s still in Israel, and it’s called vayifgah bamakom. That he hits the place. And the rabbis say, boy did he ever hit the place! M’komo shel olam. He hit the place of the world which is G-d.
(Getting a text) It continues in the passage we have been reading about the two kallot. And these two madrigot, and it tells us that the first bechinah, of kallah, is limsor nafsho l’echad, which means, shma lashon havanah, to understand, which is contemplating the greatness of G-d, how He is one, before, after, what he’s talking about is what we’ve been calling yachid, in which that something is there is no change in G-d, there is only Him. Atah hu ad she …. Halom… etc. ayn elokim, there is no elokim who hides me. So, don’t ever (book Him? ) be mechalael name, don’t ever empty out the world from My Presence.
The second bechina is kalta nafshi she hi lashon tchukah v’ ahava. The second aspect of kallah—I’m just reviewing what I said at the beginning of the shiur--is the longing and the loving, which is called bitul hayesh. There is a yesh, there is a reality, and it’s completely given over eleh she mevatel et atzmo…it seeks to come into deveikut with G-d, but it still continues to maintain its own entity. V’lachen, And therefore we find, in reading Kriyat Shema, we stop after the mesirut nefesh of Shema Yisrael in which there’s nothing other than You, G-d, and V’ahavta, in which we say, V’ahavta Hashem elokecha, with Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed, which is called yechid atatah, the lower unificiation. That is to say, because there is still a reality of separate entity, which is now completely devoting itself to Him in love. And know that G-d is the Source of all life which is here in the world of all the creatures. Then He points out that it says on the one hand, Biladai, ein elokim, outside of Me there is no multiplicity of forces, havayah…I am the Source of all of those apparently different forces which hide me away like the shell on the snail hides the snail in his house, which is part of him, so they’re no different from one another. And Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed is the experience of there being other and separateness but which is is always being given its life by G-d. Then the love comes from yesh mi she ohev, there is one who loves. Whether you follow that or not is fine, with or without.
The point is that we have a depiction here of a process which is complete bitul of in love, in Shema Yisrael, and then Baruch Shem, there is a drawing down of His name, which means that there is someone outside Him who can call Him, that’s the Shem and that’s the malchut. A speaking, malchut actually means the cutting out of the twenty-six letters, or the twenty-six which is the name of G-d, havayah, mal means to cut. Malchut is to cut (inaudible) to enunciate the name of G-d as one who stands outside of Him, Baruch Shem…Vaed. It’s down here in this world forever—as long as this world is—and then Vahavta et…and then you come to love Him.
Now the first one who said, Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed was Yaakov Avinu. And it happened when his children were in Egypt, he was going to tell them about how it would be at the end of time, and he was about to start prophesying about how it would be at the end of time, and the prophesy disappeared from him. All of a sudden it went black. And so he looks at his kids and he says, wow, maybe there’s something about you that’s stopping me from being able to describe the end of time. So you know what they say to him? They say, Shema Yisrael, listen Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad, we know there’s only one G-d, so he says, Baruch Hashem. But he doesn’t only say Baruch Hashem, he says Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed. That’s the first time those words were spoken according to chazal. And that means that Yaakov Avinu is the realization of Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed…. Then what he’s allowing for is v’ahavta… he’s the one that’s going to allow now for the love of G-d, because yesh she ohev. There’s someone here who says Baruch Hashem, and who can call G-d by his name, and celebrate His name, and His malchut, the enunciation of different realities, and long for Him and love him. So Yaakov Avinu is the one who allows for that type of love to appear which is the love of the experience of G-d….
So how does that come about? Let’s go back to a story we hear from the Chumash and start from there. Are you wondering something? (What kind of love exactly?) The longing for G-d. That is the kallah that is the kallah of longing. Yaakov Avinu introduces that into the world with the words Baruch Shem Kvod…Vaed, creating a separation between us and one and it results from this passage from binah and gevurah now coming into tiferet.
The point is that we now will have introduced into reality compassion and rachamim because we can now ask G-d to have mercy on us, compassion on us in our distance from You. I have compassion on myself in my --- and now this experience of the gap and the distance becomes a source and root for the experience of compassion and the compassion of love. A love of caring, a love of responsiveness, a love which includes within it the overall connection of oneness of Avraham Avinu and the separate existence that Yitzchak introduces into the world from the perspective of human beings, but also the experience that there’s nothing other than G-d, which is the experience of Yitzchak, and now that’s going to produced by now merging and separating, an opening to rachamim.
Now before I explain this, I’ll just give you a very abstracted model right now. I want to point out to you a most fascinating thing: When we say Ashrei, we’re actually following through a certain process which is being described there, of the coming of the connection of G-d to the worlds through the sefirot. You may or may not have noticed that there are ten times during Ashrei that the name “Havayah” is spoken. Do people know this? This is a good thing to know. And the Arizal reveals that those ten times are k’neged those sefirot. Count them and watch. (This next part is amazing!—DG) Ashrei yoshveh….Kachah lo—that’s just the way it is, keter, that’s the way reality is, as G-d meets His world. Thilah David…I’m drawing some of your name down into the world. Every day I’m bringing down bracha, now we’re starting to open up. Gadol Hashem… I can’t know You except by complete surrender to You. It’s completely overwhelming, Your greatness, that’s chochmah. …eiyn choeker…I can’t be choeker at all. Dor l’dor… but what happens is all the generations, each one adding praises to G-d, eventually I suppose we’ll have a lot of them, but in the context of infinity you can’t have enough generations for the praise to Him to be spoken, but nevertheless we’re going to open up generations, we’re moving out towards binah. Hadar k’vod….and then we get to Chanun v’rachum, that’s binah, meaning that You, G-d are chanun v’rachum, You’re full of mercy, we’ve spoken already about tiferet, and we’ll see how that’s so, but she’s is the origin of it, as having a rechem, as being an imah and binah, as being very patient as things work themselves out. Then Tov Hashem.. that’s chesed. Yoduchah… everyone bows before Him and gives thanks to Him, and is m’vatel themselves before Him, that’s gevurah. And then finally, as we continue to go down, so we get to the next time that the word of G-d’s name is spoken, is Somech…. That is tiferet. Somech…k’fufim. Those who might have fallen as a result of the intense demand of gevruah, I’m raising you back up, I have mercy on you, I’m connecting you back to mother, and I’m raising you back up. That’s tiferet, and that’s the middle line. And that’s when the mercy of the mother becomes revealed and the child who has fallen, she picks him up. You’ve fallen down from the overwhelming demand of gevruah; mother comes and picks him up. It’s the hamtakah of gevurah that can knock you down, it’s just too overwhelming, like the accountability, the demands, the expectation on me that gevurah can be, then the sweet mother of binah raises the child up, that’s the rachamim that begins in binah, then it comes to expression in tiferet which is going to becomes embodied by Yaakov Avinu.
So Yaakov Avinu’s experience of G-d, is one in which his awareness of G-d is the one who is the unified and energizing life force that it within all things. And now I want to give a little about how we see this. It’s quite amazing. You know, Chazal talk about Yaakov Avinu’s whole process of his leaving Eretz Yisrael. And the truth is, Yaakov Avinu’s leaving introduces something new into the world, and that is going to sleep. Yaakov is the first one who the Chumash describes as going to sleep. He goes to sleep on his way out of Israel, and he begins to dream. Now, when he begins to sleep (Question: Doesn’t Avraham and Adam go to sleep?) There are other people, like Avraham and Adam, who have been put to sleep, but Yaakov Avinu is the first one who actually lies down and goes to sleep, of his so to speak own choosing, and chazal describe that as something which G-d wanted to happen.
The Gemara describes how Yaakov Avinu went to Haran, and he says, Wow, I passed the place where my ancestors prayed. I’m going back there. So he turns around and he starts to go back, but it’s getting late, so Hakadosh Baruch Hu does a miracle and he makes space shift and snap!, before you know it, he’s at Har Hamoriah, he’s at the place of the Akeidah, he’s at Yerushalayim, so he gets there and he prays, and then he want to leave. So the Gemara goes on and G-d says, Wait a minute, this person has come to my hotel, and he’s not going to sleep here? And so about that it says, Ki va hashemesh…He actually extinguished the sun, and Yaakov Avinu went to sleep, so he didn’t mapil alehem tardeymah like Adam and Avraham, but it was really important to G-d that Yaakov Avinu go to sleep.
And we find that Yaakov Avinu actually achieved a madrega in being about to walk. Vyisah et raglav. In the morning he picks up his legs and begins to walk as a result of his having gone to sleep there. And there’s even a midrash that says, ki telech…that when you walk assuredly, that’s az telech… that’s Yaakov Avinu. Why? Because “vshachavtah…” when you went to sleep, you had a really sweet sleep. As the pasuk says in Tehillim, keyn yitein…sheyna, he gives the one He loves sleep. There’s this G-d, like, sleep, sleep, sleep. He loves it, that you should sleep. And then, they say an amazing thing. That G-d speaks to Yaakov Avinu, and He said, Haretz asher.. the land you’re lying down on –he’s the first one to do that—I’m going to give this to do and to all of your progeny. So, there’s a kashiah in the verse: What? That’s all? Just the land you’re lying down on? That’s pretty chintzy, I mean Avraham Avinu was getting as far as he can walk, and Yitzchak was getting as far as he can see. And Yaakov Avinu is going to get the land that he lies down on (laughing). So Rashi says, No, G-d actually condensed the entire land of Israel right underneath him. This is why, the Rabbis say, Avraham Avinu, he gets a limited heritance as far as he can walk, as the verses indicate it’s a Gemara in Shabbos, and Yitzchak gets a limited inheritance, but Yaakov Avinu? He gets an inheritance without boundaries. How does Yaakov Avinu get an inheritance without boundaries? Because he’s touching it all. It all condenses right under him. It becomes one place, which is what happens when he puts his head down to rest. All the rocks are saying, “Oh, he’s putting his head down to rest! I want to be the one, I want to be the one…” Until they all just merge into just one rock. Same thing. He’s touched the place. Vyifka b’makom. which is how the pasuk describes his arriving there. He’s “hit the spot”—that’s Yaakov Avinu. So that Yaakov Avinu is the one who most intensely relates to the inner core of reality, I’m explaining, in which the externalities of it are there, but he’s relating to is unity aspect. So he’ll see the place. He hits the place, it has substance, it hasn’t lost substance like by Yitzchak. But, nor is it like Avraham Avinu, in like, “it’s all substance,” but it’s one substance. In Yaakov Avinu, it’s all one substance, but there’s one underlying reality which is maintaining it all in its presence. And so when he touches that he touches all places. He hasn’t lost distinction or delineation, but nor is he experiencing distinction or delineation as dividing things in a way which is they’re not all one.
So I’ll try to give you a clearer sense of things. You have a body. And it’s got a lot of stuff going on inside of it right now. You have billions of cells that are taking, giving, moving, dying, being born. All kinds of organs and processes. Unbelievable what’s going on inside of you right now. And it’s impossible for you to relate to all of those details, except by a unity consciousness, which is I’m one organism, then you’re relating to them all. And you know, on some level, you know every single thing going on inside your body right now, not consciously, because that would be completely overwhelming. On some level of awareness your brain knows every single thing that’s going on inside your body right now. It’s got to, because it’s running the show and we know that. If there’s any brain damage, chas v’shalom, so different functions inside the brain will cease to function. Or you can excite them by touching different parts of the brain, or giving the brain different kinds of sounds. Now they do things things, trying to imitate different types of brain waves inside your head, and different things start happening to you. What is that? So that means, you mean everything going on inside your body, but you don’t know it, that’s because there’s a unity consciousness which is holding it all.
Now get this, folks, and that is that the whole world is one man. (Here you begin channeling real magical moments—DG) This is the teaching of the kabbalah from the idra, of Rashi. The first thing that G-d made is—
and making is already too material a language—the first thing that G-d made is Adam Kadmon, the primordial man. Which unfortunately, since Darwin, sometimes conjures up images of someone with a bat and a rock, swinging someone by her hair. But let’s get that picture out of our heads right now. Adam Hakadmon is the first realization of the beginnings of a reality which will be outside of G-d, so to speak, and that is tzelem elokim. Everything that is in the universe on spiritual levels or physical levels is Adam HaKadmon. Everything is as one man. And you can see this, just look outside the window, and my gosh, once you get into a consciousness of Adam, the world is Adam, so then just seeing the sky as the skull and the clouds are like brain matter, and the trees, if you look at the prime form of a tree, it’s like branching lungs, it’s really what trees are doing—how the vegetable kingdom functions— and the animals are like the slinking digestive tracts that are processing all the stuff, and the Rabbis say, it’s a midrash in Kohelet Rabah, the world has eyes, and ears, and a mouth, and hands, and arms, and a chest, and a heart, and legs…it’s all a human being. (Amazing insights! –DG)
And it is, folks, it is—it’s just a matter of vibrating the right frequency. Just look at a tree and let your lungs connect to that, look at the sky and the stars as those bright points of insight and understanding. And look at the clouds, and you’ll see it looks just like brain matter, it really does. You don’t have to be that imaginative. You just have to shift into that consciousness of the unity of it all. Now, how do you experience that? Is it one place in which all has been abnegated and lost into a perfect unity of things? We’re way out of Yitzchak because there’s nothing there. But even with Avraham Avinu, in which everything is one and the same, so to speak, there’s an experience of all that, in which you see the tree and you see the clouds, and you see it all and it’s all one. And therefore there wouldn’t be nothing that you would touch in that reality which wouldn’t in some sense be everything all at once because it’s all one organism. Are you touching me when you touch me here? Are you also touching my toenail? Well, in one sense, no, you’re just touching me on my wrist. But in another sense you’re also touching me on my toenail. I mean, everyone knows that. Try start spinning a little needle here or putting a little pressure on, and all of a sudden things will start happening in my body because it’s all one. And that’s the way it is. All of reality is that way. You press that table, and something’s going on in Timbuktu because you’re doing that. Vyifga b’makom, you’re touching the place. And those are the only people who really touch the place. But they touch m’komo shel olam because they’re touching the place of the world, so they’re touching everything when they’re touching the place. That’s Yaakov. So a guy can say to him, You know where you’re lying down? That’s the place, because now you’re sleeping.
What does it mean to be sleeping? It means you’ve left ego-consciousness in which all you are able to see are different parts of things as separate entities. But when you sleep, you’re not losing the experience of the different aspects, you’re just entering into them from a different access point. It could be equivalent to your subconscious, whatever that means on whatever level, knowing everything going on inside your body right now. Imagine tapping into that.
By the way, this is the best way for you to access and know something of what it means for G-d to know everything. You mean He knows all of us? He knows all of us, and what’s in our thoughts, and in our minds, and in our hearts, and digestive systems, each one of us, and but not just the people in the room, but everyone in the community here, and everyone in Gush Etzion, and everyone miles and miles around, everyone on the globe, billions of people right now, and everyone who’s ever been in time, and that’s just this one speck of a planet, talk about all the constellations, and he knows all that at once. Come on, how do you know all that at once? You can’t follow all that at once, can you? Well, you’re doing it right now, with every single thing that’s happening in your body. That’s why Yaakov Avinu is also the source of hashkafah. Of the divine providence and the divine knowing.
So, this is something new. Yaakov Avinu is on the place, and it’s all there. And so G-d says, ufaratzata. That’s how G-d tells Yaakov Avinu, You will have it all. Ufaratza…. Kedma. Not like Avraham Avinu, and not like Yitzchak, who had very specific inheritances. By the way, of course, there’s no other place where this could be happening but Jerusalem, where he is lying down, (The belly-button of creation, the only place—DG) which is why Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says, you know, what it says later in the Chumash, ki lo vatem…you haven’t come to the resting place, and you haven’t come to the inheritance place, hahamenucha, the resting place, that’s Yerushalayim. The nachalach, that’s Shilo…Ah, you can rest there, you can really rest. The truth is, the only way you can be in that place is by resting. Because as soon as you start moving around, okay, welcome back, start moving around, come out of the sleep. There’s actually a mitzvah when you bring a korban to Yerushalayim, there’s a mitzvah linah, the Gemara Rosh HaShanah, daf tet, You can’t come to Yerushalayim and not go to sleep, you’ll miss the whole thing! That’s why no one ever said, When he came to Yerushalyim, Makom tzar mi lalun. There’s not enough place here to sleep. Of course there’s enough place for everyone to sleep in Yerushalayim. If you go to sleep. That’s the only condition, of course. Mamash, it’s a halachah. (Long reflective silence).
So, a most interesting thing happens in Yaakov Avinu. If you look at the mitzvah of loving G-d, it says, V’ahavta et Hashem elokecha…m’odecha. b’chal lvavcha, the sefarim say, that’s Avraham, he’s given over his heart to G-d, and his love for others is really non-existent. He does chesed with others out of his love for G-d. B’chal l’vavcha. Out of his love for G-d. That’s Avraham.
Yitzchak, b’chal nefshecha, dies for G-d, gives up his life for G-d, b’chal nafshecha… even notel et nafshecha. even if he takes your life away, so there won’t be a lover left, I’ll be dead. That’s Yitzchak.
But Yaakov Avinu is b’chol m’odeach, What does b’chol meodecha mean? So the Rabbis teach, that’s with all of your mammon, your money, your possessions. So they ask, What? After you’ve given up your life, now you’re telling me about giving up my possessions? I mean, what’s more important, my life or my possessions? Right, your money or your life? What was this guy’s name, this old Jewish comedian --Jack Benny, who probably none of you ever heard of -- he had almost every show, this self-deprecating Jew thing, so a mugger would come to him, and say, “Your money or your life!” and he would go, “Hmmm, let me think about that.” So the Rabbis actually say, So what’s going on here? So there are some people who actually love their lives more than their money, and there are some people who love their money more than their lives. So the people who love their money more than their lives, they have to be told also, you have to give up your possessions for G-d. Okay, that’s good, but still the order of the verse has this as being the ultimate. Seems wrong, right? It shouldn’t have been the ultimate, it should have been becausehol m’edodecha ub’chol nefshacha. (How is it the ultimate?) Because it’s the end of the verse. You’re asking the same question the Admor HaZakeyn asked, after you’ve been in yachid, and there’s nothing other than Him, I’m back, here I am! and I love you, and I long for you. But you were just completely at one with him. What are you coming back for? What’s going on here?
But that’s exactly what the verse says, B’chol nafshecha uvchol meodecha. All of a sudden you’ve got a meod. You know what meod is? It’s the same letters as Adam. (Sounds of amazement) Here I am, with all my possessions, with all my self-hood, with all my creativity, my meod. The more than what you gave me, so to speak, the creativity that I’ve generated. Like the Rabbis said, tov meod, G-d saw and said, Hm, the Yetzer Harah’s pretty good, it’s very good, meaning it’s beyond the givens, it’s when you make yourself into something, that’s the meod, that’s when Adam becomes the meod, it’s really a lot, and that is Yaakov Avinu. You know how I know it’s Yaakov Avinu? Because in last week’s parshah, Yaakov Avinu is about to meet Esav in VaYishlach, and he says, Just wait a second, I’m going back to pick up these pachim k’tanim, these little vessels that I left behind. So the Rabbis say that in the thick of night, at the risk of his life, he goes back to get his pachim ketanim and he starts wrestling with the angel of Esav. That’s the scene when he’s left alone. Vayivater ’yAvraham Avinukov l’vado. Why was he left alone? Because he went back to get these little flasks. So you know what Rashi says about that? The tzaddikim, they love their money more than they love their bodies. Oh man, really? Yeah. Because his creative investment in creation, his personal realization of what he worked for and what he made out of all the givens of life, he’s not going to give that up. That’s his mammon. That’s his meod. It’s both a real thing and a symbol.
You might be willing to appreciate this more if you imagine a painter. (Whispering) He painted this most glorious painting. It’s beautiful. This is mamash his eternity in this. This is what he’s brought to the world. This is what he’s gifted the planet with. It’s marvelous. And everyone who looks at it just realizes that there’s been someone who’s walked this planet who’s this glorious creature. What a creation that person is! And then becomes aroused to know the beauty of G-d and the one who has created it. And now, imagine that person being told, “Either we will slash you or the painting.” Where does that go? It’s not so pashut. And imagine someone who loves the Creator so much as sees the embodiment of the Creator in what he has done being asked that question, what should he give up? Okay. That at least touched something of what that would be in the meod, but thank G-d we’re not asked to do that by G-d.
But what we are asked is to devote all of that to Him—that’s meodecha, In other words, to be real, creative, unique, separate people of substance, and to love G-d through that, that’s not loss of self of Yitzchak, or “we’re all one” of Avraham Avinu, it’s my piece, my little piece in this reality I have now embedded into the organism of all of creation. My little piece, my little, little piece, I’m devoting it to the organism of Adam HaKadmon. I’m not viewing it as some separate particle just flowing free-style into space; it’s got the makom of the world that it’s part of. I’m devoting it to G-d. I’m devoted it to the totality. I’m not losing it. It’s like my real and specific and different entity connected to the all. That’s bechol meodecha. In full and real love in which it’s all connected.
This is why the Ramchal teaches that the triangle is the form of the sefirot when they’re in their perfection because there’s a third that binds them together, that’s Yaakov Avinu. As opposed to when they’re one on top of each other, which is Esav, which is hierarchy in which one is seeking to overcome the other. But this consciousness of “we’re all one organism”, it’s all one reality, that’s the consciousness of Baruch Shem Kvod Malchuto L’olam Vaed, which is is echad, as opposed to yachid. It relies on yachid, it relies on seeing each as a different independent creature. But it ends with echad, we’re all one interconnected and forming one human being, which is Adam Kadmon, who is the image of G-d.
(Sounds of someone weeping in the background.)
And this is why I want to tell you something very beautiful. And that is the statement, bishveil li nivrah haolam the world is created for me, whereas by Adam HaRishon, it’s all created for me, but by Yaakov Avinu, it will come through as a shvil, a path, bishvil li nivrah haolam.
I once had this experience. I taught once the mishnah in Sanhedrin, about bishvili..olam. The Mishnah asks, Why was Adam created alone? And the answer was, so that everyone could say, Bishvili..olam, that’s what the mishnah says. Then the mishnah goes on and says, so every time you kill a person you’ve killed the whole world. So it looks like we said the same thing again, it’s just that one is positive and one is negative. But I think there’s a deeper thing here. The only way I intuited that it needs to be taught is, for everyone in the room to say bishvili…olam at once, because everyone was bothered by that. That sounds egotistical, the whole world was created for me? So you’re to serve me, and all of this is just to serve me? But you’re saying the same thing, right? So who’s this cup for? (Grabbing cup) “Bishvili nivrah haolam--No, bishvili nivrah haolam, No, bishvili—“ That’s the way most of the world walks around. Until everyone is saying bishvili and then they becomes one organism saying bishvili nivrah haolam in which I have my particular path which is being expressed through my specific expression of it in which I am embedded in the overall reality of echad.
So Yaakov Avinu’s love of G-d comes from his realization of his selfhood in a way in which he is enthralled with G-d as being the life force which unifies all of this together into one organism. That’s his experience. And therefore he’ll always have deep compassion on every part of creation that it should find its right place in that organism. That’ll be his prayer. And that’s why his prayer is called in the Chumash vayifka bamakom, that’s when Yaakov Avinu was m’taken maariv, the Gemara says. Vyifka bamakom. Everything should have its place. When things are in their right place, the organism functions right. But they need to know what they’re there for. Like, if my eye undoes its being an eye—Hey, I don’t want to just be an eye, man, that’s too little for me just to be an eye. I want to be a nose and a mouth too. Then we start running into trouble. This is a compassionate stance in the sense of I’m seeking for you that you should have your place. Do you understand a compassionate stance? If there’s a poor person, to be compassionate toward him is saying, I just want you to live. This is zokaf k’fufim, that we saw in Ashrei, that’s tiferet. You’re beautiful just as you are, which is Yaakov Avinu.
But the real beauty of you is in your embedded context. Ah, then you’re really beautiful. One note is very beautiful. But it’s far more beautiful when there’s a symphony playing and there’s a harmony to it, and there’s whole reality that it’s a part of. That’s the real perception of beauty. A kind of connectivity to G-d in which G-d is making it all beautiful. Because he’s the makom, allowing everything to be itself. By being in the embedded context of all. It’s a balance. I know I live this very much.
I’ll make it really pragmatic. I don’t want to do anything if it’s not going to be everything. To do this particular thing, to teach Chassidut on a Tuesday morning in Berot, I mean there’s a big world out there. I mean, what is this? Nothing compared to everything. So why bother getting up to do it? Why bother? So that the picture of the all can be completely debilitating. So I’m going to stay in my room, I’m just going to do my own thing. I can’t do anything. So I’m just going to stay in my own room, and do my own thing. Well, what’s that? And we wobble between these spaces. I do.
And the ability to say bishvili, derives from binah, and I’ll teach you something really deep from Kabbalah, that nativ is from chochmah, which is the vision of it all, and shvil is in binah, the Arizal teaches, but suffice it to know that shem havayah in all of its permutations adds up to the word nativ. And all of the permutations of shem ekyeh, which is shem binah, add up to shvil. Ehyeh, that’s in the first person, me speaking. I am experiencing G-d as saying, ehyeh, I will be. That connection up, which then produces later rachamim, But they all becomes shvil, so that creation can say bishivil…But we have everyone else in the room saying, bishvili…olam ,too, Baruch shem.. vaed. Your great malchut, how beautiful it is, how blessed it is. And that’s the higher place, that’s what the Baal Hatanya, wants to say, that’s the one that G-d really wants, is when we’re souls in bodies and connected to His life flowing through it all, uniting it all and being one organism. That’s after the experience of Yitzchak, of yachid, is the experience of echad. It’s all one and I love you, G-d And I’m devoting all of my uniqueness, all my possessions, all the things I’ve made to the participation in the one organism which is ki vyachol, You.
A person who lives that, everything he touches is part of the all, it is the all. And that is exactly what the Ramchal teaches at the end of in the Mesilat Yesharim when he says, the kadosh, which is Yaakov Avinu, everything he eats, touches, sees, becomes part of the sanctifies reality of G-d. But he’s not not seeing it, He’s seeing it. He’s seeing it and having the deepest connection with it that could be. (Long silence).
The Rabbis say that Yaakov Avinu had the beauty of Adam Harishon before he sinned. When Adam HaRishon was Adam ha Kadmon, he extended from the ends of the universe to the ends of the universe. Yaakov Avinu had that. Beauty. Now you can get a taste of what it means to be a taam also. Perfection, I’m not trying to manipulate anything. Not trying to distort any reality so that it comes out how I want it to. Taam with what it is. But something I do want to tell you, and it leads to where I hope it will introduce something in a workshop-type orientation. Yitzchak is the one who can demand, so to speak, mechila from G-d, so Yaakov Avinu will introduce compassion that we’ll have on one another. And I believe that it works something like…and that is, by virtue of my knowing that we’re all part of this one organism, so you’ve come into my life, and you did something really annoying, you like, walk by my car, scratched it, and didn’t even give a hoot. Al tidag, yiheh b’seder. Don’t worry about it. Let’s say. I’m dealing with my car right now, it’s the first time I have like a nice car, already smashed it twice. So where will the forgiveness come from? Where will the mechila come from? Not G-d giving me mechila, but my mechila for the person who just walked by, it will come from the consciousness of our one organism. You are there for a reason, and it’s all part of the picture.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: Yitzchak introduces the laughable paradox that there is nothing other than He, and the human perspective, which is He has vacated space for us.
Episode Transcript:
I want to continue our exploration of the pathways to love of G-d as we've been exploring throught the vantage point of the unlikely characteristics of Yitzchak Avinu.
We have seen, although Avraham is known as the lover of G-d (and that he has many characteristics which are crucial for anyone who is to be a lover of G-d, from which we can learn), Yitzchak Avinu is very present to that relationship to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, too; and although his primary relationship to Him is that of yirah, and the name associated with him is Elokim—which is the name of din—but what we're coming to discover is that actually, were it not for din and Elokim, then there would be no space for love. And what we have seen is that specifically, the withdrawal, or the aspect of din, or gevurah which makes space, or creates an otherness—a room that there should be an other—, it is the crucial transition that allows for love to emerge.
So we saw Eleh toldot yitzchak ben avraham, Avraham holid et Yitzchak, the verse which opens up the parshah, which is the primary parshah about Yitzchak, which is that These are the generations of Yitzchak, here they come: Avraham gave birth to Yitzchak. So usually, generations have to do with the progeny that comes out of a person, and yet the Torah says, Eleh toldot yitzchak ben avraham, Avraham holid et Yitzchak, Avraham gives birth to Yitzchak. So how is that the toladah, the progeny, of Yitzchak? So here the catch: We have this beautiful relationship between Avraham, who is the primarily the power of chesed and love of G-d, and Yitzchak, who is the power of withdrawal and making space that Avraham indeed gives birth to Yitzchak. Meaning, that it's because of G-d's desire to give and exalt existence—which is chesed—and to act as a lover, that he gives birth to Yitzchak, who is the power of withdrawal and making space. That's one level. But the other level is Eleh toldot yitzchak ben avraham, that the geneology of allowing for there to be a love which will come into existence, namely Avraham (who gives birth to Yitzchak), requires that there be a Yitzchak; meaning, that in order that there should be Avraham, there needs to be Yitzchak, so that Avraham is, in a sense, a toladah of Yitzchak. Do you hear how this works? I'll put it in a different language. That the withdrawal of G-d and His infinite presence that allows for there to be a space in which there will be creatures of otherness is itself what allows for the appearance of a life-giving and a love-present principal, or characteristic, which is Avraham. Because if there were no lover, then there would be no loving. If there were no space for one to stand against you and apart from you, then there would be no relationship. And so the progeny of Yitzchak, so to speak, is Avraham. He allows Avraham to become revealed. But it's of course Avraham, namely, the motive force of giving life and giving love, who gives birth to Yitzchak. So you see, each one is a going back—each one is providing the other with their reality. There would be no withdrawal if it wasn't that G-d had desired to give and to love. But nor would there be the possibility of give and love were it not that there was withdrawal.
So this verse guided us both into the realization that the withdrawal and the empty space is in itself an opportunity for the realization and the experience of love, and that's why it's there. And we did work also with being present to the emptiness and the lack. The vulnerability that that involves, both on the part of Hashem Yitbarach, so to speak, and our part, the ability to hold space, [we?] 6:15 tend to stay in that, enough that there should be an arousal of the desire and the longing for the One who will now come to be with me in that space to realize relationship.
So these were some aspects of Yitzchak. And we saw that Yitzchak's primary activity in the world was digging wells, making space, and this can fall into terrible degredation and distortion. The plishtines, who are advantage-taking of that kind of a perspective, they make fun and ridicule of that. Some of where it goes with Esav, that his tiredness and boredom with a meaningless world which G-d had, so to speak, vacated, and the insistence on action and on doing, which becomes Esav's par excelence expression: I'm going out into the field and I'm going to make it happen, I'm going to hunt it down. The way he reflected his father's own consciousness and desire to sanctify that space of being a transition point, in which he asks his father, How do you take ma'aser from the straw; in a sense, his father's realization that indeed he is, in a sense, a straw—he is like a hollow corridor through which things pass but that is at the bottom of it a wellspring of mayim chamim. As opposed to being a mamvoi mfulash, open-ended at both ends, which was the idea of the plishtim.
And we also saw at the end of last time that Yitzchak's planting is the first time that zerayim come up again in the Chumash, ever since the very first time they came up in Bereshit. And I'll just remind you of where we were there and then we'll go farther there today, and I want to take a different tactic on how to approach it.
The way in which the Chumash describes on the third day of Creation, when G-d creates the plant life, there is the most extraordinary thing; and that is, He creates the grass that it should be mazriah zerah, that it should give seed. And He creates the fruit trees, that they should give off fruit that will have seeds that will make trees like them. The grass didn't have that. So the grass had to make a kal-v'chomer. So the grass said, If the trees, which are big and easy to distinguish one from another, need to reproduce in a way in which they preserve their species, so us, how much more so, kal v'chomer. And so in the following verse, it says that the earth gave forth grass that was mazriah serah l'minahu. That had seeds that made its own species, even though it's not what G-d had ordered.
And here, rather than G-d being angry that the earth hadn't produced what He had asked it to produce, in another scene He is, about the trees not tasting like the fruit, etc. (sic) Here, G-d is actually overjoyed. And it says, Yehi chvod hashem l'olam yismach hashem b'maasav. The honor of G-d is forever. He is joyous in His creatures. How is he joyous in His creatures? He is joyous in His creatures because the grass figured it out and understood that He desired specificity of species, that things should be different one from another. He was overjoyed with that. It was the first time that it said that G-d was happy with His creation. Up until then it's been good, He keeps saying "Everything's good." But now he is happy: yismach hashem b'ma'asav. Why? Because the grass had made a kal v'chomer and here [we see it? Unclear because someone is making noise 11:10] so deeply: the grass had an empty space, so to speak, within which to have an awareness of knowing what it was that G-d wants, identifying His will and extending His will into a space that He, so to speak, had vacated, by not telling them what they needed to become, so that they should become what they choose to be.
But, here's the thing. What they're choosing to be is exactly what G-d wants. And that gives Him great joy, when they choose to be exactly what G-d wants. That's kal v'chomer. And it's the first Torah she b'al peh. It's the first Oral Law, in the sense of the Oral Law being the creative interraction and expression, it's the first Oral Law expression in the Chumash. It's the first time Chazal say there's a kal v'chomer. Kal v'chomer being like, mamash, that's the one, like everyone knows the kal v'chomer. That's the derech she ha Torah nidreshus (12:16) which most involves human sechel, or understanding, binah, l'hitbonen, to understand something, to contemplate, to draw out its implications.
There are thirteen ways in which the Torah is nidreshet. But many of them are not logical. They are just sort of like, principals. But the one which is the logical principal, which means it involves binah, to be mitbonen, to contemplate and to draw out implications, that's kal v'chomer. The first time you have a kal v'chomer is with the grass figuring it out: G-d's very happy. Because here is the most beautiful moment, when his Creation is indeed honoring Him: Yehi yichvod hashem l'olam. But how is His creation honoring Him? That in the space He vacated, His creation seeks Him out. And not only does his creation seek Him out, it knows to align itself with His will.
And it's this deep secret, the secret of the vacated space which is indeed not really vacant. Which is the other aspect of Yitzchak and his consciousness, which is a paradox. And don't expect to figure it out, because you can't. But Yitzchak leads a dual life, a dual existence, a dual consciousness. On the one hand, a consciousness of the vacated space in which the calling is for me to become myself expressed and the other, which is there is nothing empty of Him. That this empty space which He has emptied is not empty of Him. I mean, there is no place empty of Him. You can't hold them both, they contradict one another. On the one hand, He has vacated the space so that I should grow. On the other hand, the Zohar says, there is no space vacant of Him, how can you say there is any space vacant of G-d? He's infinite. What does that mean, He vacated space? What are you talking about? He's infinite, His boundaries don't end somewhere, do they? It's ridiculous—of course, He fills every place. Then, if He fills every place, then where am I? Well, you're in the space He vacated. Well, where is that space that He vacated if He fills everything? It's where you are. Me? Yeah, you! Oh, you mean me, okay, fine. Is that to say that there is a space where He is not? Chas v'shalom! Now what do you do? Nothing. You laugh. There's nothing to do. Laughing is what allows us to be in utter amazement without trying to hold with our sechel the contradictory realities. And all you can know is that there is a consciousness which is divine perspective which is there is nothing other than He, and the human perspective, which is He has vacated space for us. And you can know those two things. And we're going to see today, B'ezrat Hashem, how powerfully applicable that is and how crucial that is of both those consciousnesses at once. But the only way to hold them is just to laugh.
So, now just to put this back into the story form, when the grass has a kal v'chomer, where is it figuring it out what it is that G-d wants from? By observing G-d and knowing what it is that G-d wants. There's an element there that is not entirely expressed there, that idea, but there's an element there of them knowing G-d's will.
This is the deep secret which we might have mentioned of the way we bless the Torah when we make an aliyah to the Torah. So if you've listened, so you know the first bracha before reading the Torah is asher bachar banu mikol ha'amim v'natan lanu et torato, He chose us from among all the peoples and He gave us His Torah. Magnificent. Then when you're done reading the Torah, then you say, asher natan lanu torat emet v'chayeh olam nata b'tocheinu that He gave us the true Torah, and that He planted eternal life within us. Chayei olam nata b'tocheinu. Yichvod hashem l'olam yismach hashem b'maasav. He planted eternal life within us. That is a reference to Torah she b'al peh, to the incredible capacity that we have by our minds, by our hearts, by our being, vibrating with the divine consciousness of knowing what it is that G-d wants, of having that revealed to us. That's the eternal life that He planted within us and it's growing all the time. That's Torah she b'al peh. So when you're finished reading the Torah she b'chtav, okay buddy, now it's time for you to step down from the bimah, and begin to realize through your life and through your awareness what it is that G-d wants, by virtue of the life that He's planted within you. That's why the second place in the Torah that there's someone planting is Yitzchak. He's the one who uses the zeraim, because he lives the vacated space in which there can be a planting, which will bring forth that which G-d has already embedded within the empty space which we experience as empty space—but which is full of His presence. Don't mind me having said something which is totally contradictory because you can just laugh at it, it's okay. There's nothing else to do with it. But we'll see that it has tremendous implications, and one of them is something called mechila. The word in Hebrew, mechila, which means forgiveness, actually comes from the word, chalal, the empty space. Now how those two are related, B"H we're going to see by virtue of a sotry.
And it's a story of the end of time when Yitzchak comes forward with all his glory. (19:37) There's a story here on this second sheet. It's brought in the Talmud in the chapter called Rabbi Akiva, and there's reason why it's the chapter called Rabbi Akiva, and why this story would be there, and that is the following. Rabbi Shmuel Bar Nachmani says there is a verse which says, You are our Father, because Avraham we don't know, and Yisrael we don't recognize, but You, G-d, redeem us, l'olam shmecha. Your name is forever. So in the future, G-d's going to come to Avraham saying, Your children have sinned. So Avraham says to Him: Ribbono shel olam, let them be wiped out. Too bad. Start again. You know, I like new beginnings. So You'll have another one.
Then maybe I should go to Yaakov. Yaakov had a lot of trouble raising his kids. So maybe You'll have a little more mercy? So I'm going to go to Yaakov. So He goes to Yaakov, and He says, your children have sinned. So Yaakov says, well, let them be wiped out in the glory of Your name. Oh, man, come on, these old people they know nothing, and the youngsters, they don't have any advice to give. I'm going to go to the one in the middle. I'm going to go to Yitzchak.
So He goes to Yitzchak, and he says, Yitzchak, your children have sinned. So Yitzchak says, What, my kids, not Your kids? Huh? Come on. When they said, Na'aseh v'nishmah, so You said, Ah! My first born son, now they're not your kids anymore? What happened? And anyway, come on! How much did they sin? How much do they live? Seventy years, come on. You're around forever. Seventy years! So seventy years, and if You take off twenty years, because You said You don't punish them until they're twenty years old, so there's only fifty years left.
So let's take a look at those fifty years. First of all, twenty-five of those years are nighttime, right? So, they're sleeping, they're getting ready for bed, they're waking up, they're drowsy, so now there's twenty-five years left. So how about taking away twelve and a half because they have to daven, and eat, and go to the bathroom, so basically, there's only twelve years left in a person's life where they can do anything productive. And anything destructive. So You know what? If You're willing to take them, good. And if not, how about half on me, and half on You? That will leave You with six and a quarter. (22:27) And You know what, if You want to tell me that they're all on me, well, I have sacrificed myself to You.
So everyone looks up, and everyone looks at Yitzchak and says, wow. You're our father. You're our father. So Yitzchak says to them, What are you giving me these praises for? Praise G-d. Just look right through me. So they look at—and it's very interesting. Machvey l'hu Yitzchak, hakadosh baruch hu beinayu. Yitzchak shows them G-d with their own eyes. So they all look to G-d and they say, ki atah hashem avinu. You, G-d, are our Father. You are our Redeemer, me'olam shmecha. Your name is forever—very important here—Your name is forever. So Yitzchak becomes the man of mechila. Yitzchak becomes the man who brings about forgiveness. So how is it that he brings about forgiveness? And what does that have to do with his having been on the altar and having sacrificed himself?
But you see the depth of this is, that the one who knows the empty space also knows that there is nothing other than Him. Because the person who knows the deep secret of the empty space knows that there really is no empty space. I'll put it like this. Why did G-d need to make an empty space, so to speak? Because He fills all in His infinity. So to say now that He makes an empty space is to contradict the reason you told me He needs to make an empty space. So He is no longer going to be infinite now that He made the empty space? Of course He remains infinite. But only the one who is deeply aware of the lack of His absence, and knows the secret of His having made Himself absent in His deep desire that there should be an other with whom He has relationship, that there should be a name, a name, which means the possibility of calling out another, and calling into expression in the mind and in the reality of another knows that there really hasn't been any vacated space at all. 25:11. Because He is infinite. Which is why He was going to be vacating the space in the first place. Now, don’t worry, none of this makes any sense. But that's this consciousness, which is a consciousness which leads to well, then it's all G-d. And this is what the Maharal teaches, he says the most astounding thing.
This is the Maharal of Prague, one of the greatest and in consensus teachers of Jewish teaching, became both, I would say, really the root of much of Chassidut, and also the Lithuanian depth thinking, especially in the guise of somone by the name of Yitzchak Hutner and other great teachers of depth teaching. Rav Kook, who enjoys both worlds, also is greatly indebted to the Maharal's teachings. (I just want to put him in a context.) So the Maharal says the following: Ki mitzad Yitzchak umidato ee-efshar she yiyeh hasarah v'hafradah l'yisrael min hashem yitbarach. The truth is, from the side of Yitzchak, of all people, my gosh, Avraham, the big lover, Yaakov, the big compassionater (sic!), no, but it's because of Yitzchak that you can never separate from G-d. Rak yesh lahem deveikut v'chibur l'gamrei el hashem yitbarach. They're completely attached to G-d. Lo shayach b'chet sheyimavdil umarchik et yisrael min hashem yitbarach. It's not chet that can separate us from G-d. Why? Ki mitzad midat yitzchak asher midat hadin because from the vantage point of din of all things, ka'asher yered l'omek hadin when you get to the very depths of din, yesh lilmod zchut. Then what you teach is merit. Or more deeply: Then, what you teach is translucense. You know, like in zchuchit. Something you can see through. That's what you teach when you get to omek hadin.
Omek hadin. Because omek hadin, G-d, is exactly what you told me, G-d, when You took me on the altar at the Akeidah. And You said to me, your life is about to disappear, my son. And in that moment I saw, that the truth is that there is absolutely no in-depth independence of my life. It's only You who provides me with it. And therefore I can never justify and lay claim to my life being deserving of being lived. Because as much as I try to claim to my life being deserving of being lived, I'm always going to get back to the point of but He's the One giving you your life. How deserving can you make your life, if He's always the One providing you with it?
(Can I say then that he never died and never lived?)
We'll get to that in a second and you're right to bring it up. So, I am completely present in that moment to actually in a sense, not being here because all is You, G-d, that's why Yitzchak cannot answer G-d in that moment. He can't answer G-d—what's he going to say to Him? Excuse me, just give me one more breath, I mean I deserve it, I did such good things in the world until now, don't I deserve another breath? Because you earned it? With what did you earn it? It's all from Me. It is all Me. And at that moment, Yitzchak becomes ashes on the altar. And literally, the Rabbis say, when the Jewish people came back from Babylon, and they didn't know exactly where to build the altar in the second Temple. Well, they looked around, sniffed and saw: there was smoke rising from the place of the altar. It was Yitzchak's ashes. Because the very one who knows of the empty space G-d had made also knows that there is nothing other than Him. And the real irony and the real joke, so to speak, is that the one who knows the empty space and knows otherness most deeply also must know most profoundly that he is not here. That all there is is G-d. And what he knows that all there is, is G-d, he also comes to know the depth of din, which is called al korch'cha atah chai. You live by force, which is to say, G-d is wanting you to live. He's wanting you to live in an embodied consciousness which experiences yourself as other and separate.
So I'm identifying with G-d's will by making the kal v'chomer. And if I look around and see that He made all these different species, I guess He wants me too. Ta da! Yismach hashem b'maasav. Wonderful. Lichvod hashem l'olam. That's great. That's the honor of G-d, that you are willing to live the separateness of consciousness is longing and in pining away for G-d, for Him, for His sake. And so, it's this astounding and impossible situation and the most blessed one. And that is, the more you become your own separate self, so the farther away you go from your Source in oneness. But should you just reabsorb yourself into the oneness which is your source, then you'll be moving very far away from your source and His will for you that you should become other. You want to hear that again? The farther away you move from the full abnegation and nothingness within G-d, by becoming an expressed self, so the more distant, so to speak, you become from Him, and the more you're just like longing for G-d in this empty prairie of space opened up that you should be able to be your independent entity.
And you're crying out for Him and you're longing for Him, and as the Ba'al haTanya describes it, you've become G-d's bride, from the meaning of the word kallah, which is kalta lecha nafshi, my soul thirsts for You, my soul yearns for You, You've become so far away as I've become my own separate self. And then the more your realize in your life the will of G-d, and express it your life as servant to Him, coming to know more deeply what it is that is His will for you, so then the more you begin to touch again, how He lives through you, and how you live in Him. And really, you're nothing more than His expression, which is the the other aspect of kallah, which is kilayon, which means you become completely abnegated. But the more you become completely abnegated, the more you mvatel and there's nothing other than Him, and then cease to do, because there's nothing other than the blissful presence that is Him, then the more far you become from what His intention is for you, which is that you should be separate, yearning for Him and arousing love for Him, and this is the eternal ratzo v'shov, back and forth, which is the life of those who know the place of Yitzchak.
But in depth, in omek hadin, that oscillation ceases, and all is known to be G-d. That's why it's Yitzchak who points to G-d at the end of time, and says to Him, it was all Him after all, and then G-d can forgive them, because they have learned the secret of translucence, has been melamed zcut, and has achieved mechila. Which means, opening up the tunnel, and mechila in Hebrew is a tunnel, opening up the tunnel, hollowing it out so that there should be forgiveness in which you'll see, and yes, it's for every single one of us. But every single thing that comes our way is G-d. And every thing you look at is Him, and every single circumstance you're thrown into is His realization.
Ever hit a dog with a stick, or threaten one with one? Oh, you're all such nice people. I've seen children do it. And the dogs, they attach the stick, it's the funniest thing. All the dog ever sees is the stick. See, a lot of people walk through life and all they ever see is the stick, so there's this person who's like saying all these nasty things to you and putting you down and betraying you and being really angering. And you start biting at the stick. What are you, a dog? What do you think, there's something other than G-d? Well, wait a minute, didn't you tell me there's not independent entities, and my own life, etc. (sic) yes, it is, but can you hold both those at once? Yes it is, and you know what? If you see a child who's being abused, so that's not the moment to say, That's all G-d and I guess that's what the child is meant to be having done to him—turn your other cheek. Or someone's chasing you down to kill you? Turn your other cheek. No, al korchecha atah chai. G-d has put you into this embodied condition of humanity that you should experience the other and that you should know that that moment now, part of that moment is you in it. So part of that moment is you having seen that child being abused. So now the calling to you is to respond to that. Not to say it's all G-d. And yet, that's to say it's all G-d, because, I'm responding because I'm here with G-d manifesting through me as one called upon now to respond to that circumstance.
See, there's foolishess which has come into the world, which is also a descendent of Yitzchak, which is, well, if it's all G-d, then turn the other cheek. Let it just play itself out. I really once had a friend who actually has left yiddishkeit, and I actually saw it all happening. I watched him enter into the consciousness of It's all
G-d and all love and that's true, and it is all G-d and it is all love. And therefore it's all just the way it needs to be. So I remember asking Him, What happens if you see someone chasing someone else to kill him? What do you do then? And he really didn't know how to answer me. Because it's all for the best. And it is all for the best. And it's all da'at. He really didn't know how to answer me. So I said to him, It says in the Shulchan Aruch the weirdest thing. It says actually you should kill the person who's trying to kill someone else. For him, that was like a breaking point. Because he didn't want to re-enter the consciousness of, I'm here to be seeing this and to be responding to it.
I had this most amazing thing where I was at a bris and oftentimes there's a Rabbi called upon to name the baby. So I'm standing there to be naming the baby and brachot and maybe some of us in the room were there. And it was a cloudy day in Bat Ayin, and the father says to me, vayikarei shmo b'yisrael, and the father says to me, Anan David. Anan David. Cloud of David. So I look at him and I said, No, I'm not going to do it. Now the reason I'm not going to do it is , anyone who knows early Jewish literature knows that Anan David is the nemesis of the Torah she b'al peh. He was the chief Karaite in the time of the Ramban. And the Ramban and other rishonim are full of all kinds of terrible things about Anan David, may his bones be ground to dust. A curse reserved for very few. So this guy is asking me to name his son Anan David. So someone who's holding the baby in front of me is like a hippy guy. Beautiful person who's fully love. He's also learned. He understood what's going on. So I sent the father, I said, you go talk to your wife, you go figure out another name, I'll stand here, the people in the room are standing there, it's okay, someone start a niggun. So he says to me, Rav Daniel, Rav Daniel, maybe this is his tikkun! So totally, I looked at him, I said, if it was his tikkun, I wouldn't be standing here. That was it.
(What was his name?)
I'm not going to say. But that's holding both.
(Is that the coach of bechira?)
I'm going to get to questions in a minute. But that's holding both. And that omek hadin can bring forgiveness—it's just so important to come back to that—because that forgiveness comes by virtue of realizing that it's all Him. And that's what Yitzchak says to G-d: It was all You all along. How small do I need to reduce them until you forgive them? Seventy years? Fifty years? Twenty-five years? Twelve and a half? Six and a quarter? How about ashes? And then they all look at Yitzchak and they say: You're our father. And he says, it isn't me! What are you talking about! You don't understand anything. It's Him! It's been Him all along.
But he pulls the fast one on G-d Himself, just like he says to them, It's Him! It's been Him all along, to G-d he says, It's You! It's been You all along. What are You going to do, wipe them out al kiddush shmecha? I (sic)never really lived! What are you talking about? What's going on around here? Ah, if they could know they've never really lived, then they have lived. V'atem hadevaikim b'ado-nai chaim kulchem hayom. You who are davek, and as the Maharal teaches us, the ultimate davek is Yitzchak, you who are hadavek in G-d are the only ones who are really alive. So that the only ones who are really alive are the only the ones who know that they are not really alive. It's a joke, huh? Yitzchak. This is why the Rabbis say, you are not allowed to fill your mouth with laughter in this world. Yup, don't think this is going to be easy for you. Here on the other page from the ??tee (45:03) haleitzanut, the Maharal brings a most astounding thing. He tells us the following story. And that is that Rebbe Yochanan, in the name of Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai, said the following: It's osser for a person to fill his mouth with mirth, with schok, schok, schok, ah. Yitzchak. You can't be fully Yitzchak in this world, can you? No. You know how I know? Because it says, az yimalah schok pinu ulshoneinu rinah. It says, then your mouth will be full of schok. And your tongue with rinah. When's that going to be? B'yom she amru bagoyin, higdil ado-nai lasot im eleh When even the goyim get it, that G-d's been great with us. That G-d has been great with them.
So, you know what, Reish Lakish, after he heard that, in the name of Rebbe Yochanan, so he never filled his mouth with laughter again. Uhhh. How come? So the Maharal says, You know what? There's no full simchah in this world. That's because this world is a world of always shifting, always growing, always changing, always developing. Never full, never complete, and joy is when things are full and complete. So there is always lack, there is always something which is not. So you'll focus as much as you can on what is, and you should, and that's what tov is, and that's what hakarat hatov is, and that's what connection is about, but we all know, that it's not full, because we live in a land of transition, transformation, aval az, but then, yimale schok pinu.
Listen to this, this is unbelievable: ki milat az bal davar she eino tachat hazman. Because the word az refers to that which is not dominated by time. What's not dominated by time? Well, time is continuity. It's a continuum, And az, it teaches about the moment. I'll say that again. Time is continuum and continuity, and az speak of the moment. As I've explained elsewhere, she lekach amru, that's why the Rabbis say, kol makom she omer vayhi everywhere it says and it was, and it came to pass, in the Tanach it's trouble, man, vay, vay, oy very, vayhi, oy vey, mipneh she kol havayah hu shinui, because every coming into reality is shift, and shifting is bad, which is why in Hebrew rauh, which is something shifty and shaky, somes from the word rah. It's shifting, it's changing, it's inconstant. It's going in and out, it's disappearing; give me something solid. The moments of joy, it's just when you experience it as full, here, now. Az is now. Aval milat az teaches the now. Sorry for the pun, but the power of now. Because gevurah is the poiwer of now. Gevurah literally means power, as we're going to see in a moment. Schok. Pinu. Just being overwhelmed with joy to the point of laughter. Because the laughter is the action or the response to the breaking out of the confines. He's no longer confined by the stricture of continuity and continuity. He's just in the now. Nothing more joyous. It's not a secret of ekartol. (40:55) It's a secret of the Maharal. V'lchach, yomar, not even of the Maharal, it's Yitzchak avinu. V'lchach, yomar, az yimale schok pinu, When will their mouth s be full of schok? When will Yitzchak resound in the entirety of creation? Az. You thought that meant "then their mouth will be filled with joy." No. It meant "now." What do you mean, now? Right now? No, we're in olam hazeh. When you're living in the continuum and continuity of time, you're living in olam hazeh, but when you're completely present to now, you're in the only contact point we have with eternity, because the only contact point we have with eternity is, of course, the now, which is eternally present. It's always now. And when you live it's always now, you live joy. You live schok, which is the breakout of confines, expression of simchah. And so he tells us, ze ka'ashe haolam b'shleimut v'lo yihybo shinu she hu shayach l'zman. Aval yiyah haolam, but the entirety of the planet will be, c'mo ha'atah. All of creation will just be the now. That's the world to come. That's az.
And here is the deepest thing. This is called in the kabbalah when gevurah goes up to binah. Meaning, az, which is gemtria eight, which is the aleph, or the imah, that is standing above the seven which is the seven midot that are beneath her, when gevurah rises up to there, so then the empty vacuous chalal becomes known as it's all filled with Him. That's when there's great joy. But it's only for those who have experienced and are willing to be in the empty nothing of prodding through life and history, who then discover that it's all been Him always, and nothing ever changed, Which is something I can just say now, but it's a consciousness that is not a consciousness that we're currently in. But it's the right now. Because right now, everything is perfect. This, by the way, the Arizal teaches that the bracha we say in the morning, hanotein l'sechvi vinah, l'havin bein yom u'ven layla means, sechvi is a gever, it's a cock. Sechvi. That's gevurah. He gives. We bless G-d for having given gevurah, the mentality or the consciousness of binah, which is where instead of the empty space being empty it's full of His life, it's rechem, and that has two possibilities and two aspects and their both good. One is the rechem, which is the empty space has now beomce the place of birthing, new life, but on the higher level of binah, when she's actually receiving from abba, when she's actually receiving from chochmah, is that she's not pregnant with life. She is life. It's not waiting for something. It's right here, because there is no time.
(So she's pregnant…)
One aspect is pregnant, that is there is something waiting to be born at this moment. But the other consciousness is, it's not something waiting to be born at this moment, it's all right here now. Which is the truth of there's something waiting to be born of this moment. Because the truth of there's something waiting to be born of this moment, is that it's right here right now, you just have to open your eyes and you'll see it, buddy. Pokeach ivrim, the next bracha, just open your eyes, L'havchin bein yom uvein layla. Give sechvi gevurah, the power of binah, to distinguish between night and day, to see the daytime that you thought was night. These higher levels of consciousness are really meditatative states which are the blessing of shabbat, which is me'ein olam habah, which is when everything is done, there's nothing left to be done. And ironically, by the teaching of schok of Yitzchak, who because he entered the empty space and became an other and an independent entity, can realize the joy of knowing that there was never anything else but Him. But because the way we are built and constructed, so if you don't live your life fully human, fully as other and fully with all the pain of that and all the longing of that, and all of being the kallah of G-d, as the one who is longing for Him form the empty space, so then you will never become the kallah of G-d, the bride of G-d who is completely absorbed into him as having been completely mitbatel into His being, which is the other meaning of the word kallah.
Don't ever think that you can skip stages. You can't walk out on life. You gotta live it fully. If you haven't experienced the pain and the suffering of the emptiness. If you haven't experienced the hurt of another person insulting you, betraying you, walking away from you, if you haven't experienced the longing of not having your mate, not having the one you'll have living (57:38) If you haven't experienced the longing of a life feeling empty of His presence and He's gone, and I'm alone, and it's dark here, if you haven't experienced that, then you will not experience the other realization of az. That's the way He made it. Because only in that longing are we aroused the consciousness of He is here. But if you skip it and you try to ignore it, and you pretend it's all okay, no, everything's fine, and that kid suffering, that's meant for him. And, no it's okay, you know, like I’m fine with it, whatever. And don't pass through the stage of the midot, which are the seven midot of emotional experience, that's the zayin of the word az, if you don't pass through those movements of seven movements, from malchut up to chesed, so you won't arrive at the aleph of the az of binah and chochmah together—which is the way the kabbalah describes it which is that they never separate—of knowing the now.
Oh, He was always there, is about the best that we can always say and pronounce it as being. That's the az yimaleh schok pinu. When? Higdil hashem, when even the goyin say, she yomru hagoyim higdil hashem la'asot im eleh, even the goyim, even those consciousness, which are of separateness and otherness and outsideness and even antagonism to the will of G-d. When even they see it. It's talking about us. It's not talking about them, It's talking about us when all those aspects of ourselves which are ego-ic that block this realization, when even they see it, higdil hashem la'asot im eleh, then we enter the place of now and joy.
There's a deep sod in this verse. And that deep sod is that the Zohar teaches in the hakdamah, that the word eleh actually comes from the word elokim. You take a look at the word, the aspect of G-d, which creates the space, which allows there to be differentiation and diversity, which is the word eleh, so you'll see, eleh hen, is elokim. So the Zohar teaches that when a person raises up his eyes, su marom einechem, R'u mi barah eleh, the question, mi barah eleh, this and this does this. Because when a person asks the question, mi barah eleh, Who has made these? He is already on his way to filling that space with the presence of Elokim. That's why the first verse Bereshit barah elokim divides into bereshit mi barah eleh. In the beginning, Who, that's her name, mi, barah eleh, Who made all of these. Who? The one of whom you can only speak of by saying who. Mi. And in opening to the question, we actually create the chalal. And then when you create the chalal, and dwell or shoheg in that, like we were practicing last week, and then ask the question, Who? So you're [al?]ready on the move from gevurah up to binah, and that empty space becoming not only pregnant with possibility, which is the next stage, understanding the pregnance of possibility that this moment offers, but then the higher level of knowing that it's all here right now. And there's nothing else but who?
(Can you explain again the concept of kallah? I'm not sure I understand it.)
I'd love to. (Singing a Chabbad niggun) The concept of the kallah is explained here in the Baal Hatanya, and also in the Sefer Tanya and the Likutei Torah in the following passage here at the beginning of your sheets.
The Baal Hatanya explains, as a continuation of what we once learned here, in verse Shir hashirim asher l'shlomo, yishakeini m'nishikot pihu. What is the origin of song? The Song of Songs. The origin of song, of all the songs that are sung, is the oscillation between the consciousness of I am here longing for you, and the higher consciousness of that there is nothing other than you. The oscillation between longing for you, and there's nothing other than you. There's nothing to long for, because you're right here, is the origin of all song. All songs are rooted in that. And it's why they go up and down, up and down. (Singing) No song, unless there's movement of ratzo v'shov. Of the longing and the pining for Him, and the return to Him, and then the leaving Him for the separated consciousness which He has declared for us. And so the Baal Hatanya teaches (1:07:22) hineh noldah she hakadosh baruch hu nikrah hachatan, you know, G-d is the husband, groom, ukneset yisrael nikrah b'shem kalah, and the Jewish people, knesset yisrael, all our souls, as the Jewish souls are the kallah of G-d. And that's because it comes by the name of hamshachah v'hashpatah torah l'yisrael. The Torah comes down as the chatan's giving, as it says, the day he married us was Matan Torah, that's why someone who give joy to a chatan gets Torah. That's the or ein sof, the eternal and infinite light coming down. ukneset yisrael, which is our focus now, us, longing and loving G-d, is the makor of nishmot yisrael, vkein kol nitzotz m'yisrael b'frat hi b'chinat kala every single one of us is a bride to G-d. hineh kalah yesh lah shenei perushim and kalah has two interpretations. Harihon m' lashon kilyon. The first one is from the language of being completely mitbatel, I can't think of a word for it, really like lost, burned up, kilyon, she m'chaleh um'valeh hakol mi lashon kalah. All burned up, as Yonatan explained this, kalah she'eri my flesh is just gone. Ki milat kalah hi shem davar ha moria pula rakah, zakah, dakah, etc. hasheni milashon habet hasheni milashon kalta nafshi, that my soul pines for you, yearns for you, hainu tchukat hanefesh lida b'leiku bi kalah kalah boro yitbarach. The intense desire and longing of the soul to become at one with G-d's light, as it says, v'elishech tchukatech as it says about woman, that she has a desire for her husband. So these are two different aspects of kallah, one is that she's completely dissolved into him, and the other is that she lives separate from him, longing for him. And the truth is we say this in kriyat shema v'hainyan d'hineh b'kiryat shema yesh shtei b'chinot mesirut nefesh you know there's two ways of giving yourself over to G-d. Harishon limsor et nafsho b'echad, when one goes and says to G-d, there's nothing else than You, there's no one else but You, I am completely not, there is no I to be saying "I am completely not." There's only You. The aspect of yachid. Only you. I'm dust. I'm ashes on the altar. And then the second is v'ahavta bchol nafshecha, And you shall love Him with all of your life force. Which you cannot do unless you maintain a presence of your life force. There cannot be a lover unless there is one who loves. Afilu natel et nafshecha. You are willing to give it all up for Him, but you are aware enough of yourself that giving it all up for Him means giving something up. These are two things. And to understand them and to understand how it is that the kriyat shema has us moving down, it seems, from having been completely at one and absorbed in His being, to having separate existence, standing apart from him, longing for Him and giving ourselves over to Him, (1:11:47) achar bechinat mesirut nefesh b'echad she harei v'havaktiv sof parshat netzavim lir? vahavat hashem elokecha ki hu chayecha because after all, it says at the end of parsha netzavim to love G-d because he is your life—that means you experience your life. That means you experience your life. Aval halo mesirat nefesh ul'hashlich hay aminege tchu bitul metziut l'or ein sof mamash, I don't get it. How is it that you start there and then you come down there? Those are the two aspects, and it's the oscillation between them that we've been touching some of today. That produces songs, and that is Shir Hashirim and B"H next time we'll continue into this ma'amar and see how it is that the second is the higher level. But we've already come to know that. That is a G-d who seeks out our love for Him and to express His love for us, Who has actually given to us, what would actually appear to be the lower consciousness so that we can live out His divine purpose. That's yehi hashem l'olam yismach hashem b'maasav.
Or, the way Yitzchak Avinu teaches that atah hashem avinu goaleinu meolam shemcha, Your name, meaning your expression outward was always within You, you always had a desire that we should be, it's from within You, Your name, even before there was a world, there was Your name, at one with you. And so when Your name appears in the world, which is us, about which we say, Baruch shem k'vod malchuto l'olam vaed, blessed is your name, and become realized as His name, so then Yitzchak says, well, meolam shmecha, you know G-d, Your name was always. Meaning, even before there was a world, You and Your name are one, and even after there's a world, You and Your name are one. But the world will only know that when all of the goyim know that, whether they be the external goyim or the internal goyim, come to know that and can forgive. And therefore love. And know it all as one.
(Can you be more clear the difference between the akeidah, which is I have become ashes, and giving the other cheek.)
You're looking for a greater clarity around this forgiveness thing. Does that mean that when I've been slapped, I don't respond? There are levels like that. This is a subject which deserves it's own clarity, maybe; I have some ideas about that. I think that's a really important shifting, knowing that it's all G-d and not biting back at the stick. And yet, also to know how to respond from the human consciousness of responding rightly. It has something to do with shiviti hashem l'negdi tamid, of knowing that it's all G-d, but knowing that l'negdi, the knegdo, that I'm called upon to live a separate consciousness, but I'm also able to know shivyon, that all is equally G-d. B"H we'll speak some of that out and also do some work around that.
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: How Yitzchak's fear/reverence of G-d creates a context in which love can come about.
Episode Transcript
It might help me to tell you that I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the things I want to give over to you. With that said, I'll launch into what I believe is an appropriate continuation of we were exploring last time we met. And it revolves around the nature of how we become able to love and especially focused right now on how that happens with our relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And last time we spent time focused on the vulnerability that Hakadosh Baruch Hu allows for in His making of an other who can say no. And I want to continue with that this time and go into it more deeply.
(Getting Chumashim with Rashi) The way I want to go about this is by introducing you to the idea of din in the world. The processes by which what we call din—judgment, gevurah, power—and that actually functions in a way in which we normally see that as being anitithetical to aspects of life that are love–oriented that have to do with chesed, with life enhancement, giving life, and yet, there is a most profound phenomenon, one of the deepest ironies by which we live: in order for there to be a relationship in which there will be a giver and a receiver, so there needs to be a withdrawal. By which I mean—and it's something we're all able to experience and know—if I truly desire the beloved, not that I should desire to be able to love, so then I need to withdraw myself, so that the beloved may become who he or she needs to become.
And this, I'm going to pick up where we left off last time, the way Shlomo HaMelech begins Shir Hashirim, and he says, Shir Hashirim asher l'Shlomo, this is the Song of Songs of Shlomo, yishakeini m'neshikot pihu. Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth. Ki tovim dedecha mi yayin. Because Your dodim, Your love, is greater than wine. And if you look at that verse, you notice, that this is the Song of Songs of Shlomo, yishakeini m'neshikot pihu is said in the third person, Ki tovim dedecha mi yayin. And then in the second person, because Your love is greater than wine. M'neshikot pihu. Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth. We're talking to G-d. Ki tovim dedecha mi yayin. Because Your dodim, Your love, is greater than wine. And so in the verse, there is a shift from speaking to Him in the third person to speaking to Him in the second person. And this, if you remember , we explained, has something to do with, well as the Rabbis put it, a very profound difference between Torah she b'al peh, and Torah she b'dichtav, the Oral Law, and the Written Law, as it's usually reported as being. See, the depth of the difference between the Oral Law, and the Written Law is not that one is passed down orally and the other is passed down in writing (a phenomenon that is the result of something that's profoundly different about them), but rather that the Written Law refers to things which are directly given and revealed by G-d in the "face-on" relationship with G-d speaking face-to-face with Moshe, as the verse says, panim el panim, G-d spoke to him face-to-face.
The Oral Law doesn't come about by G-d's revealing His face at all, but rather by G-d withdrawing, so that we should become those who will grow and create and develop by living in a space vacated from G-d's direct revelation, so that creativity will now be possible for those who live without a face-to-face contact with G-d. Let me say that a little more slowly.
(What did you say about the Written Law?)
The Written Law is what G-d, like I'm speaking to you now, says to you directly, which is what Moshe says directly. There's no real space there for you and what you need to become, create, and say, and what your life needs to say, and your particularity and specificity. Come on. The Law's the law, nothing to say, open the book, done. This is the Law, this is a chok, this is set in stone, literally. That's the nature of the Written Law. The fact of it being written is an indication of that. It's handed down in writing because that's the way it really is in its essence. But that's its essence. He's telling you like it is.
But then there's this spaces (sic) In fact (8:53) one of the ways Rashi points this out is that the spaces between the words and sentences are very dear. And they express G-d's endearing, for instance, at the beginning of Vayikra, where it says Vayikra el Moshe, we're told that G-d told to Moshe, and He called him by his name. You should know that's a very crucial passage there at the beginning of Vayikra, because it describes how G-d reveals most of the Torah, from the Tent of Meeting to Moshe. Rashi reveals that he is called out by his name, yes, and there's another few statements that Rashi makes, but the important one I want to point out is the following. He says that He called to Moshe, the voice would come to his ears, the rest of the Jewish people didn't hear. Might it also be that G-d called Moshe for the spaces in between?
(What do you mean, "the spaces in between"?)
I'm just reading literally now. Because the spaces in between comes to tell you vay'daber. Called him for the speakings but not for the waitings. Well now, then what were the waitings for? Answer: To give Moshe a chance to integrate and to contemplate between teaching and teaching, and between one matter and the next.
Certainly, Rashi goes on, when a regular person teaches and learns from a regular person; every time G-d spoke to Moshe, He would speak and wait. The waiting is the withdrawal, which allows for the moment during which Moshe Rabbeinu will himself be able to identify with and integrate what's been spoken. Okay, one level. The deeper level of the spaces in between, or the one we experience, are the space in between G-d having revealed Himself at Sinai, and the rest of history. The rest of history is one long pause, during which G-d is not speaking to us directly, but has rather withdrawn His direct revelation so that we should be mitbonen, which is to contemplate, draw out implications, draw out applications, creatively become involved in the process of revealing His word. So, that withdrawal is actually the path to the empowerment of the other to become what they are meant to become. In the case of G-d, ironically, withdrawal is what is necessary for us to reveal His own voice. His own revelation. But that's a complicating factor when it comes to G-d, so we'll put it aside for the moment and keep it first in what we know for life about how crucial it is.
You see, oftentimes people mistake love for doting on someone, for being always there for them, for constantly being connected to them. That's devaikut. That's davak b'ishto. As you may remember, we saw in the Ramban, that couples completely couple together in communing. There's a constant awareness of the presence. That's what it's meant by Vdavak b'ishto. You know that Rashi says that therefore the man leaves his father and mother, joins his wife, and they become one flesh. That is that they are always in communion with one another. That's powerful and deep and connected to a relationship of love. But if that's all there is, then there cannot be love. And the reason for this is that love requires withdrawal, so that there can be an other whom I love. And that other must have the space within which to develop into that person of fullness, because they can blossom into the fullness they were meant to be by virtur of having been given the area and the arena in which that can happen.
See, this is another aspect of what we were exploring last week when Adam Harishon has to discover his loneliness and the lack in order to truly enter relationship. That's from his perspective. But now we're looking at it from the perspective of the recipient of that love. If it would not be that there is a provision of space for you to be who you need to become, so that's not love, because I’m not allowing you to be the one who I'm in love with. Well, this is the way G-d made His world. And from the very beginning, there's the peculiar dance between ahava and deveikut, between love and full communion. With love involving actually a withdrawal which allows room for the other to be. And communion, deveikut, involving a full communing with that beloved. Do you have a little bit of a picture? Good, I really like it that I can just talk this way. But hopefully we'll bring it down even more alive for you.
Let's appreciate this rather incredible dynamic upon which the world is created. This is the dynamic, that according to the Rabbis, Shlomo HaMelech is referring to when he says, "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth." Because your love is greater than the love of wine, meaning the following: When in the third person, so to speak, I'm experiencing You—Him—kissing me with His mouth, that He has withdrawn. That's why it's in the third person, as withdrawn. When I'm experiencing Him kissing me with His mouth—third person—ah. Your love, I'm now experiencing You very intimately, Your love is dearer than the love of wine.
And if you remember, I explained to you that wine is the Written Torah, the direct revelation, when He is totally with us, davek with us. Like we say, v'atem hadeveikim bashem elokeichem, like the Rabbis say, deveikim mamash, truly deveikim, as it says in the Gemara in Sanhedrin, truly davek, like a flask has its cover at one with it. Glued to it, so that it's one piece with it. That's how the Rabbis actually describe that deveikut. A full oneness in communing, as opposed to the tovim dodecha, your love which comes from when you have withdrawn, is greater than the wine, which we say is the Written Toah, meaning that it's that which sits—that's how they read that verse.
(Who's they?)
The Rabbis. It's a Gemara or midrash that reads this pasuk this way. Yishakeini m'neshikot pihu, let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth, that's the Torah she b'aal peh. Ki tovim dedecha—the Torah she b'al peh—is greater than yayin. So that there's a process of Him withdrawing, third person, and then I'm experiencing His love, His dodim, in the second person of Him begin near to me. And that experience, the third person to the second person, is far more dear than the wine, which the Rabbis say is the Written Torah.
I'm bringing that as an illustration of the way G-d has made His world, and that is that, quite astoundingly, in order for there to be a space in which we can exist, He needs to withdraw. And that withdrawal is known as the tzimtzum. And that tzimtzum is an act of din. (Passing out sheets) The Chasdei David, who was one of the great mkubalim, says, (19:35) T'chilat hakol haya or ein sof baruch hu pashut. V'ein davar panui mimenu. In the very beginning, the infinite light of G-d was utterly simple, and there was nothing empty of Him and His presence. When there was an arousal of His will to create worlds, whatever that is, and how that came about, that there should be a knowing of Him. So He contracted Himself, and left an empty space in the middle. These are all geometric terms that are meant to arouse some level of undertstanding. U'vmakom hahu he'etilu kol haolamot. And in that place He eminated all the worlds. And that tzimtzum is the root of din. Din being that which is the power to give things a place that is appropriate to them. To mete out what is appropriate to them by making space for them. See, in my meting out to you by virtue of my making space for you, so I am actually acting from the principal from din, as opposed to from the principal of chesed, which is a flat, undifferentiating awarding of existnece.
So the way this is working now, that in order for G-d to make an other with whom there can be a relationship of love, so there must first be a relationship of withdrawal. So the Rabbis say the following: it's quoted here also in Rashi, that bereshit barah elokim, the name of elokim which refers to him as din, is the creator of heaven of earth. At the beginning, G-d thought to create it in din only, And then he joined to it the midah the rachamim. That's the Rashi here. Even hikdim the midah of rachamim, he even preceded everything with the midah of compassion. Now here's the catch, and it's a beautiful one. The word rachamim is the same word that we use for womb, woman, her uterus, her place of carrying a baby. That's exactly it. The mother withdraws herself, so to speak, from occupying all the space of her body, in order to allow that there should be an other that will become formed within her, and so her uterus is, so to speak, the sod of the tzimtzum, that allows there to be an other to be formed within in. That's the depths of shitafei midat harachamim (22:56). He actually created a whole context for this withdrawl, that it should be a place within which life will form.
Now, the reason this is important to me for us to recognize is because of there is whole principal that is going on that is withdrawal leads to creative love; withdrawal leads to relationship and is necessary for it. It's a simple point, but it's one which is not always so available to us, I mean when we're raising children, when we're in relationship with another. And certainly, living in this consciousness, when it comes to our relationship with G-d is very challenging, and we'll see why and how that is as we go along.
This is all sort of by way of introduction. And what I want to do with you today is explore the experience of the personification of this through Yitzchak Avinu. The way I want to do that is maybe a little bit odd at first. To take a look at one of the readings of Yitzchak, which is the only story in the Chumash where he appears to be active. And I want us to understand something. You see, it's important to know about the avot, that they are archetypes in the sense that the avot are the lived qualities and principals that we are describing. If we want to learn about Yitachak, then we need to understand what it is to live as the withdrawn one. In other words, the one who experiences in the depth of his being, G-d's having withdrawn to make space.
So that he knows that indeed G-d is the infinite one for whom, when he is present, there is no room for any other, and that G-d, so to speak, sacrificed Himself to make room for us. You can see that in his life, in the way he sacrificed himself to make room for G-d. But he deeply experiences this phenomenon that there is none other than He, than G-d. And this is the experience of the Akeidah, and we've seen this in the past. Hakadosh Baruch Hu coming to Yitzchak to tell him, "You will no longer live," really leaves him speechless. What is he going to say? There is nothing he is going to say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu at that moment, because he has no entitlement to life. G-d is freely and lovingly giving him life at every moment, just like every one of us. He experiences that more deeply than anyone else because there was never anyone who G-d came to and said, through his father, that the one who gave him life in this world, you are not going to live. I am going to take your life away from you, and there was no one who had the experience with such trauma that there is nothing that you could say that would justify your right to continue living.
I mean, after all, what would you say, that I've done a lot of nice things in the world? Where is that going to go? The life that you did all those nice things with is the very life given to you by the One who is now saying, It's finished, it's enough, gone. –But there are many more things that I want to do! –Well, I don't want you to do them. In that dialogue, there is only the space for the consciousness that it's all G-d, it's all Him, there is really no essential existence to anything than His existence.
So Yitzchak knows this, and Yitzchak experiences more deeply than anyone that G-d has, so to speak, made space for us. Now if you understand Yitzchak as being the one who lives that, then Yitzchak is the one who, so to speak, makes space. What is that like, being the one who is always making space?
(Very humble)
Very humble. So look at something really interesting about Yitzchak's appearance on the stage of activity. And what I'm talking about is chapter twenty-six, verse twelve through fourteen. This is where we find him actually doing something. But we have to look very carefully about (sic) what it is he is doing, and how the Chumash describes that doing.
So Yitzchak sows and plants in that land, and he found in that year one hundred portions, and G-d blessed him. And he gets very great, and he gets even greater, until he got really really great, he's gotten really big. And then he had a lot of possessions, and because he had a lot of possessions, so the plishtim are jealous of him. In verse fifteen, it says that all the wells he had dug, that his father had dug, actually, well, the plishtim had filled them up with afar. Avimelech says to Yitzchak, get lost. You're too big, we're not going to allow you to be here any more.
So Yitzchak goes away and he encamps in Nachal Grar, and that's where he lives. Yitzchak goes back, and he redigs the wells that his father had dug, or that had been dug in his father's time, and that the plishtim had filled in, we already know about them, that the plishtim had already filled them in after Avraham had died, and he called them the same names that his father had called him . So Yitzchak was a reflection of his father, and he was, in a sense, continuing his way and maintaining what his father had brought into the world—these wells—at least in this aspect.
Then his servants, they dig wells, and there is an argument with the plishtim and then there is another well that his servants dig, and there is another argument about it, and then he goes and he digs one, and its rechovot, it's very broad. Why? He says, because now G-d has made breadth, and we can truly multiply in this land. G-d has made space so that we can be fruitful and multiply. It's exactly the picture of G-d has made space. And all of this activity of Yitzchak is nothing more than making space. It looks like he's doing something, but actually, regarding his father, being a conduit through which his father's work will be maintained and continued, and in terms of the earth, he is digging away to allow what is there to become revealed. He's not really doing anything. He's the one who is making the chalal panui. He's digging away the earth so that the waters that are there, should be able to flow forth. Even his planting, the way the Torah describes it, he's plans, and then, wow! he finds in that year, in that place, a hundred times what he could have expected G-d bless it all (sic) 32:31. That isn't me, I didn't do this. I just found it. Vayimtza bashanah hahi.
But what I think is most interesting is the way in which the Torah orders the story. Take a look at this. If you were having to order the verses in the story—
There is a thing you do when you're trying to teach a kid how to write compositions, so you take a paragraph, and you mix up all the sentences, and you try to figure out which sentence goes before what. So, take a look at verse fifteen. Where should verse fifteen go? All of the wells that have been dug by his father's servants, the plishtim had covered them up. Those next two verses are out of place, because the next move that is in response to that is eighteen, right? It says that Yitzchak goes back and digs the new wells, or he digs the wells of his father. So that description of what needed to be done, or what was wrong, should then be described after that by what he then went and fixed. Everyone agree on that? Those two sentences in the middle, they are not supposed to be there.
But they are. If you leave the perspective of Yitzchak, they are. Because even the way life unfolds, is so to speak, it's not your doing, it's that there's these filled-up wells which need clearing. Well, let me tell you a story. Avimelech comes to Yitzchak and tells him that it's time for him to move on. So Yitzchak moves on. And where does he end up? Right near his father's wells that need to be cleared out. You hear? It's not like it happened that he had this situation with Avimelech and then he goes to the place where the wells are, but rather that he needed to get to where the wells are, so the situation with Avimelech erupted to get him to the place where the wells are. That's the way the Torah tells you the story. First it needs to be corrected. Then it tells you the story unfolding, which gets him to the place where he needs to be.
(Technically, I'm confused. Where are the wells, and where is he?)
He's been in the land of the plishtim,
(So the wells are in the land of the plishtim)
No, the wells are in the land of Grar, where he now goes to.
(So he returned…)
Either he's going back to eretz plishtim,
(Well, how can the plishtim be filling them up, if they're not in their own—)
Territory? It's a question. I'm not sure I understand vayashov yitzchak vayachpor et be'erot hamayim asher yachfru bimei avraham that he went back and redug the wells which had been dug in the time of his father. That's the vayashov. Why is it that the plishtim were taking such vigorous interest in what he's doing in Nachal Grar,
that needs to be looked at better. But I think the simple meaning of the word vayashav is that he went back and dug again what his father had dug.
(Pasuk yud ayin, you said they should be there.).
They need to be there at some point, because they tell the story of how Yitzchak had to leave and ended up, in the way I'm reading, going to the place where Avraham had dug wells. I don't know why they would fill in those wells. I actually have something I want to say about the nature of his relationship with the plishtim, but that needs to be better clarified.
(They were jealous…)
They were jealous. Something that's going on between them and Yitzchak that makes them into his primary antagonists. Yeah, Chaya?
(According to the Gur Aryeh, the wells were located in the valley of Grar while the valley had been un inhabited, the plishtim would stop them up to withhold them from the attacking armies. When Yitzchak moved to the valley (unclear because someone is moving a chair) 37:51
B'seder, that was the Maharal's perush on Rashi. So we have two things. The most important thing right now is to see how the story unfolds through Yitzchak. It's something that needs to happen, and it will happen through him, but not by virtue of his doing, but rather by virtue of its needing to be done. Which will be done. Okay, if you like the point, good. It's not crucial. I think it's important to see how the Torah has ordered the things.
Yitzchak is the man who digs out space. His is the life of a man who is nothing more than space. He is that open space. Now, the interesting thing is, that there is a very deep quandry, problematic (sic) that we live in our relationship with
G-d, Who has made space for us, and that is—get this— you see, the more you live out being in that space, which is a consciousness that He is not here so that I can be here, well, the farther you are from Him. Again, the more you live out the space of being in that space which G-d has vacated so that you can be here, so in a certain level, the further away you are from Him. The less you live the consciousness of separateness and individation, so the closer you are with Him, the more at one you are with Him. I'll put it to you in life, although it's not exactly parallel. The more your lover has distanced himself in order that you should have room to become who you must become, the more you become who you become, the more distant you are from the one who you're wanting to be with.
It's even deeper with G-d. In order for us to live this life, viewing ourself as separate and independent entitites, so we need to live it, so to speak, with a consciousness which blocks out the all-present infinite presence of G-d in which there's no space for another. And the truth of what tzimtzum is, more deeply than
G-d's withdrawing. It's He who has given us a consciousness and awareness which has it be as if He is not here. See, it's our consciousness that He's given us that creates the reality which we experience as being one in which He is not here.
I'll try to make this a little less wacko-sounding, I don’t know, but you see, our minds work on a certain frequency. We pick up certain things. We hear the clock ticking, we feel the table, we can see each other, because we're picking up what's around us on a frequency at which we pick it up at that level. There are other things going on in the room that we don’t pick up because we're not tuned to them. If our minds were actually like a radio tuner, we'd actually be hearing the news right now, probably the weather report, because there would be an attunement to something which we're not now attuned to, which then we could access and receive. We're all familiar with this, but we don't think about it that way. What's real is what we see and feel and touch and hear, and everything else isn't really real. Until we get into radio waves which, yeah, I guess it is real, so how come I'm not seeing it if it's not real? Well, there are realities which you can't see. Well, why don't I see them? Because you're not attuned to see them. You're not attuned to see infra-red, but if you would, then you might actually be able to see through the wall. See through the wall? What, are you off the wall? Yeah, I'm off the wall! I've actually inside the wall. (?) 43:36 Go to the other side of the wall. Why? Because I'm able to see with a frequency that sees right through matter. What, you wouldn’t see the matter? No, I wouldn't see the matter. Could it be that I would vibrate at a frequency where I wouldn't feel the matter either? You mean I could just walk through the wall? Like Superman? Yeah, if you would vibrate at a different frequency, then that's the way you would actually experience things. You wouldn't experience this as solid matter, which it barely is, you would just experience it as something which would pass right through.
(That's actually what scientists are working on.)
Yes, that's what scientists are working on. And they are probaly going to get there soon. Because it's not a big deal, it's just a matter of changing your frequency. And tune us up, just a little bit, and then our vibration shifts, and then the way we relate to matter shifts. Everything shifts. Everyone knows this, when your emotional state shifts. And all the people whom you thought were offensive and ugly or repulsive, suddnely, well, he's kind of okay, well half an hour ago you were—
Well, I was just in a bad mood. Now I'm in a different state. I'm picking up a different wavelength about my emotions and it's all shifting all the time. Emotions shift more than anything else. That's why they are kneged ruach in the four types of realities, so emotions are related to the wind, the air, as opposed to the ground, which is the body, okay, we're not going to go through them right now.
But we experience those shifts all the time because we're shifting our frequency. Just to say it in that simple sense, so you realize so maybe there would be like a divine frequency, when I don't see anything at all, but when I see things from a divine perspective? There is nothing but Him? Yes, there is such a thing. There is such a divine frequency, And you actually have a part of you that is always vibrating at that frequency. It's called the yechida. It's your highest level of soul. It's always at the frequency in which there is nothing but G-d. Wait a minute, but there is me, yeah? Right, just turn down the…..(talking slowly in a low voice) fre-quen-cy on…the…receiver, and everything comes back to independent and separate realities. In fact, in Chassidut it's taught that the tzimtzum really is a phenomenon of our consciousness. That we see things as separate. And it's the great gift of G-d that we should. It's not that it's a hazayah, an illusion, that I see you. Just like it's not an illusion when I pick up the radio waves. But there's a reality which is sort of a different vibration, frequency, in which you're not there. There's only G-d. There's only his presence. Now, on a ceratin level, the more I saw you, so the less I see Him. If I could just tune up my frequency and only see Him, then I wouldn't see you, you're in the way. I'm in the way. This is a painful irony, probably one of the most painful ironies and paradoxes of spiritual life. And it had lead all kinds of spiritualities to all kinds of crazy conclusions. Including the conclusion of maya, of illusion. Because, I'll put it like this (48:05)…if the world were with no willing Creator, if it wasn't that G-d had a will, then indeed the fact that you're there is just an illusion, we're just not tuned to the highest, most pristine and true frequency. So you're an illusion, you're in the way. (Pause) I'm just talking to myself. (Laughter). But if One who made all that consiousness, which is the consciousness we all live, the One Who has a will and desires that we should have it, well, that changes everything. Then it's not just some illusion. It's what He wills us to have. Yeah, but it's not real! Yes it is, It's as real as the one who is giving it to you, and He's the most real thing that is! Bad, thing, not a good word.
Do you hear that? It's G-d who's making us see things this way, that there is a place where He is not. That G-d, so to speak, Who is making us see things this way, is Elokim, that's the name Elokim. And it's why of all the names of G-d, it's the only one in the plural, Weird isn't it? We, the big monotheists, have a name for G-d that;s in the plural? That's bad, it shouldn't be that way. We have kel, shem havaya, but Elokim? And what's worse, that same word, if you think about many gods, that’s just elohim. Same word. Because multiplicity is a product of din, which is the withdrawal. But that withdrawal is the creation of a consciousness which will see things as if He is not there. It's like you've put on dark glasses. You're wearing now the polaroid glasses so that you're only picking up a certain reality. So now I want to shift out of that. I don't want to be apart from Him, I only want to be with Him. You just shift out of that and tune up to a place where all I know is Him. And be completely mitbatel, completely gone from my ego-consciousness which is creating a sense as if I'm separate from Him. I'm going to let that go. It's a sin to be in that state of separateness from Him, I'm going to let that go. No, wait a minute. He made me that I should have this consciousness. So, it would be a violation of the will of the very One that I'm seeking to come close to for me to strip myself of that consciousness so that it will be only with Him, because He made me such that I would see all of you and myself as separately and independently existing realities. So what do I do? To strip myself of that is to come close to Him. No it's not, it's a denial of His will. But to stay in this reality in which I don't have the experience of His being wholely and completely and fully present is to lose Him.
This is the paradox and ultimate tension within which any divinely-attuned human being lives. And Yitzchak, more than anyone, has really seen that there is nothing other than G-d. In Chassidut it's explained that he lives in a state of the yechida. That's why he's the one who's called bincha, yechidcha, your son, the only one, because he's actually living the "onlyness" of G-d.
But ironically, one who lives the onlyness of G-d, to become really close with Him—so to speak, by becoming like Him—has to live uniqueness here. So he becomes the unique one. And this is because, when one realizes that it's G-d whose wanting me to have this consciousness of separate individuated realities, then I am now going to give ultimate and full reverance to every single unique being that is here desired by G-d to be here. See, someone who's never experienced that as only G-d will never be able to experience the ultimateness and value and worth of every single creature that G-d has made here, because he will never know how much G-d, so to speak "gave up that He should contract himself, that we should be here, or how much, so to speak, G-d has awarded us by giving us the reality as living as a separate entity. This is why din always also is the origin of yirah, reverence. Of being fully aware of the divinity of the other. And always dances around the smallest of myself (55:39) or on a different level, the ultimate worth of myself. Where, depending on whether you're experiencing the all-present G-d or the small nothingness of myself, or G-d Who has withdrawn to make space for me! And is therefore living a full and deep relationship of responsiveness, which is what din is, when I'm responding to you. What you do, I do to you. That's when things become energetically connected in relationship. So that it's either all abnegation, or the full and whole presence of another to whom I respond. Because G-d, making that person now, he can't have come from anywhere else, if it weren't that G-d were making him now, giving him that consciousness now of existing as a separate entity, giving me the consciousness now to see him as a separate entity.
Should we have a little interaction here? Should I give you people a little space? (57:15)
Could I just treat you to one more thing here? Why don't you ask your questions.
(You said that Hashem cannot feel the specialness of every animal?)
Chas v'shalom, I didn't say that.
You said creatures.
Okay, Kol hanivraim. Yesh lahem erech muchlachat, mipne she haboreh olam hu machlit bchol regah latet lahem et he yishut shelahem. Vmachlit bchol regah, He is deciding at every moment to give me to see Him as separate from Him. You can hear now why if you just rest in this a bit. You can hear why the phlishtim are Yitzchak's greatest antagonist.
Here's a deep thing that's really wild. The Rabbis say that phlishtim are leytsanim. They are mockers, scoffers, cynics. And they teach this in a wild place. There's a Gemara in Avodah Zarah, page eighteen. I'm starting to realize that I have another two hours of talking here. We'll divide it up. So the Rabbis say, Ashrei haish asher lo halach b'atzat reshaim u'bderech chataim lo amad. And b'moshav laytzim lo yashav. So you have this verse which is the way that David Hamelech opens up Tehillim He says, Happy is the man, or well-estabilshed is the man who didn't walk in the ways of the reshaim. And he didn't walk in the ways of the chotim and he didn't sit among the scoffers. Hm. So, he didn't walk like reshaim walk, he didn't stand like chotim stand, and he didn't sit like latzim sit. (Laughing) That's great. So the Gemara says, this is all about Avraham, who didn't walk the walk of those reshaim who built the tower of Babel. Nor did he stand the standing of the people of Sodom, about whom it says that they were raim l'chataim, nor did he sit the sit of leytsim, namely the plishtim. All right, what's the deal? So the Maharal says that the reshaim anre people who are actively evil, they go and do bad things. Chataim are people who withdraw from doing good. That's why the word choteh means a lack. Pull back, like the anshei Sodom don't give Tzedakah.
And then there are the leytsim, they just sit, they're the scoffers. They just sit back and laugh, What, are you crazy? What, are you nuts? You think this really means something? It's all just a empty black hole, there's nothing here! What, do you think you're going to get close to G-d. What are you trying for? Smirking at anything that anyone tries to do. Sit kind of sit back and, why would you even try to move, or get up? You're just wasting your time. It's all just a figment of your imagination anyway. It's all just an empty hole. Nothing real can happen here. That's why the word phlisha actually menas to break through a hole, right? That's exactly what they do to reality, they break a hole in reality. Plisha, pleshet. It menas to clear it away. Why, you know what? Gee. They also dig holes in the sand, don't they, except the holes in the sand that they dig is all of the reality that you see. It's all just empty. Except for them, when they dig the hole, it doesn't reach water. Because mfulash means that it's open at both ends, just goes nowhere. Mefulash in Hebrew, hamavoi mefulash (1:03:21) is one which is opened at both ends, it's just totally broken through, there's no water at the end of it, there's nothing there. What do you think? What, are you crazy?
And guess what the chachamim say. Where do we know that the plishtim are leystim, scoffers, from? It says about the anshei plishtim, vayhi, katovli bam. When they were like really feeling good in the time of Shimshon, vayomru, kiru l'shimshon. Call Shimshon in, vayisachek lanu, and let him make us laugh. Oh my goodness, let him make us laugh. And this is the risk that Yitzchak lives, to laugh a laugh of scoffing. Because the one who knows there's an empty space, we live in empty space, knows that the realness of it is only by virtue of an awarded consciousness, which is only seeing things on a certain frequency. So why bother doing anything. There's really nothing to be born here. Nothing happening. And in fact, Yitzchak's name is a result of two kinds of laughter, his mothers' laughter and his father's laughter.
And anyone who's ever sought a chauvinistic interpretation in the Bible, well, he's got to be bothered by Avraham and Sarah's laughing. Avraham's laughing, and that's great, and the Targum translates, he was overjoyed. Rashi says, ah, Avraham is a joy of fullness. And then Sarah laughs, and the malachim get there: Look, she's laughing! I didn't laugh—yes you did! I didn't laugh—yes, you did! You were scaffing(?) (1:05:52). What's going on here? Well my husband laughed! Shh. Quiet, get back in the tent! (Laughter all aroud) Until you look at what they say. There's also the male-female thing, that's also a part of it, but it's too complicated. So put that aside for now. But just look at what Avraham says: Could it be that a man of a hundred would give birth? Could it be that a woman of ninety would give birth? Astounding! You mean there can be birth out of this nothingness of my wife and of myself. Oh gosh, unbelievable, what joy. But Sarah says, it says, she looked at herself and she said, Me? After I've gotten so old? I would give birth? She's seeing herself in the dimunitive—I'm nothing, can't do it, forget it. Scoffing. Avraham is looking, You mean there was nothing and now there's something? Whoa. Unbelievable.
And Yitzchak, in a sense, can go either way, and you know why? On a certain level, he does. One son is called Esav. And the other one is called Yaakov, and we'll see, B"H, how these actually live out the life of scoffing, or of being present to, in full presence, with what something called tmimut(1:08:04). But tmimut which lives in the tent, lives in the consciousness which we have been awarded, but that maintains a connection with the one who has been awarding it at every moment.
Whereas Esav becomes the scoffer, vayivez, despises the bechora—You know why he despises the bechora? Because he really despises life The first born is just the gift of life. I'm going to be dead soon anyway, man , the whole thing is nothing. How long were you around? It's just nothing. Why would I want bechora. It's not just he's despising it because it's avodat Hashem—that's the result—is that he doesn't experience himself as one who would possibly find enough value in himself as being a servant of G-d , because life itself, how much have you got and what the heck is your life? Seventy, eighty; in our days—ninety years? You know how much ninety years is? It's a speck of nothing. That's Esav, that's why he's walking around tired and bored. The only he can find to entertain himself with is killing, which is denying reality, denying the other, taking away life.
That's why ultimately, with this we'll close, the Rabbis say, You know who the great-great grandson of Esav is? He's a man named Haman. And the Rabbis say, that same vayivez, et ha bechora that Esav despised—the "first-born-sonness"—became, many generations later, vayivez haman lishloach yad l'mordechai lvado. Haman despised killing Mordechai alone. And the Rabbis say, bazui ben bazui, the despised one, son of the despised one. That's Haman, who's the Amalakite, the great scoffers of reality. And what did he despise? That he kill one person. What the heck is one person? Man. If I'm going to kill, it might as well be an entire people. But the depth is, that vayivez, even though it says that he despised, the Rabbis say that he is the despised one, the despicable one, because anyone who despises, must also be experiencing himself as despicable on some level or another. You can't be despising another in their reality unless some place in your heart you're despising your own. So that the leytsanim are the great threat to Yitzchak. But that's not his life at all. B"H we'll see next time the real life of Yitzcahk and actually how he becomes the great source both of forgiveness, and of the ultimate valuing and adoration of life and other in reverence.
How are we doing? I'll just check in with where people are holding.
Confused? Enlightened by this? Or I need time to think about this, or this means something to me. I'm actually serious about the question.
(I feel like I'm internalizing it. Me too. I'm like, observing it. Really grateful.
You can be adversary. I need time to digest. It's big piece. It's beautiful.) Okay, that's a relief. I'm going to make closure now, then I'll take questions, then we'll take time for integrated work.
How this is all related to loving, is Yitzchak is the principal of making space for love to come about. He himself, in his relationship with G-d, the Rabbis teach, is not in a relationship of love. Because he experiences love as non-existent in the presence of G-d. To be a lover, you need to be in existence. But he knows the great love of G-d in having made space that there should be an other. (01:15:50) Because the whole reason G-d made space that there should be an other is an act of love that there should be an other with whom He will have a loving relationship. And this is the meaning of the beginning of the parshah, where it says, Eleh toldot Yitzchak, These are the generations of Yitzchak. Avraham holid at Yitzchak. Avraham who is the principal of love, he gave birth to Yitzchak, he gave birth to the principal of contraction and withdrawal. Because the whole reason for the contraction and withdrawal is that there should be the appearance of Avraham, the appearance of love and compassion. All this withdrawal is for that. So he serves that purpose in the withdrawal, just like withdrawal serves that purpose.
(So you're saying Yitzchak doesn't love Hashem?)
The Rabbis say that he lives in total awe of G-d. Avraham is the lover of G-d. Chas v'shalom to say that he doesn't love G-d, but that's not his, these are archetypes, and his archetype is fear and awe. That there's nothing but Him.
(That's what he represents.)
Right. But he is in the consciousness that that vacating of there is nothing but Him, when G-d does make that space for there to be a world of love, and that's why he is the first one to love his wife, because out of that he sees, Wow, if there's someone there, and I have the consciousness to see her? That means that G-d is really, really wanting this; really, really wanting her; really, really wanting me. And so he experiences the depth of an other and himself with far greater intensity that anyone else can in their uniqueness and in their utter separateness. See, this is his power and it all is derived from a G-d who desires a world in which there should be love, and therefore again, paradoxically and ironically, withdraws Himself so that it may be. On a certain level, we blow this as parents, very often, when we think our children need us taking care of them, doting on them, watching them, guarding them, directing them, all the time, feeling our love for them all the time by our being there for them all the time. All the time for them. That's deveikut. But love also requires the principal of withdrawal. But as parents, oftentimes, we're afraid to withdraw, because our kids might stop loving us. Oh, No! Yeah. If I withdraw, then my kid won't love me. Hm. So who are you loving exactly? If you're really loving them, then you have to let them grow. Of course, guide them, teach them, etc. (sic) But there's a shift in the drivenness in I'm always wanting them to know that I'm loving them, and loving them. Is it coming from your neediness? Or is it coming from your wholeness, that will determine that.
(I have a question about the zugim. Is it that Yitzchak and Rivka have like a giving and receiving side to each like sefirah that they represent?)
I'll tell you something about Rivka, and it's like a really amazing thing to know, that if you look at the way she's chosen. I'll choose two deep things and I'll try to say them really briefly, and you can listen up, we talked about this last year. B"H I'll put this up on a website. I have a website but I don't know how to operate it…
So,…the place the Rabbis learn that a woman has a say in the question of whether she gets married or doesn't get married to the man, is from Rivka. Up until then, you don't find the woman having any say, and he takes her, he takes her, he takes her, she gets pregnant, she gives birth, she gets pregnant, she gives birth, and they begat, and they begat. Begat, begin, begat, begin, right? But then, all of a sudden there's this wild scene where they say, Well of course we're going to send her with you; after all, it's clear that it's come from G-d. Scene two, wait a minute: what if she stays another year, or maybe a couple of months, or couple more weeks, and Eliezer says, No, no, it's time, it's time right now. Well, lo and behold they say, we have a drastic idea. Why don’t we call her in and ask her what she thinks. Ta dum! Woman liberated. She becomes the other. She becomes the knegdo. And this appears first with Rivka because she's going to be living with Yitzchak who's the vacated space. So she must be the one who is in power to stand on her own two feet and be able to say no. That's the only presence that he'll really be able to love, from the vantage point of the one who is vacated space.
Was she really three years old?
Yeah. The point is, this is very important about Rivka. That's why we explained that camels were a very important thing in the story. That's why her test was whether she would give the camels to drink, because camels are about independent standing…But that's the nature of Rivka. This is why, by the way, and then we'll end this. (Sighs) Someone's got to create a kli here, someone's got to stop me, otherwise I just keep on unraveling. But, um—anyone volunteering?
(I want you to keep going! [Laughter.])
What I really want to do is workshop work, because it's extremely vaulable. I'll just say one more thing. The reason why Eliezer goes out is, to seek the wife for Yitzchak, is a total representation of that. And that is that Avraham says to him, and very briefly, to go and get my (sic) wife from somewhere else. Well, maybe she won't come. Maybe she won't come? Of course she will come! G-d's going to send his angel who's certainly going to guarantee that this is going to be a success, and you're under oath, and you know what, if she doesn't come, then—forget the whole thing. That's mamash what Avraham says. You look at that and say, What? Where is his bitachon? And why isn't he certain that G-d is going to make it happen? Because you can't be certain that G-d is going to make it happen. You're dealing with another person, for whom there must be space within which to say, "no." And to know that and to know that it's all G-d, and it's His doing, and it's His reality, all at once. Sorry not to leave you with something clear, because it's not, it's a ratzo v'shov, back and forth, all the time, and it's from that space that real marriage comes about, and real love comes about, and the possibility for forgiveness comes about, too. I just want to remind us of what we want to look it. Okay. I'm stopping here.
(You were talking about multiplicity. I didn't get it.)
All I was saying was that din creates the possibilitiy that there will be significant others. So therefore there will be rebui, multiplicity, that there will be many. Chesed doesn't make room for many, chesed just gives existence. It's flat.
(So it's not real self-centeredness. It's that you have that room open for another person to exist.)
That's right. Okay.
(So in order to be able— I don't know, I just feel like they're… one extreme and another, so is the goal not to be able live simultaneously in duality where we see the delusion and past the delusion?
Yes, I would avoid calling it delusion.
(Okay, the creation?)
Yeah, and that will have everything to do with Yaakov.
(All right.)
Good.
(That's awesome, and I want to find some way to experience it, not making it too cerebral, not thinking about it, where we could (write out/ride out?) places where we don't see G-d in our lives in our world. We might think about this one and think, how does this distance create love? To apply that kind of question to it, and maybe do it in some kind of meditational form. That seems like intellectualizing it instead of experiencing it, I feel that it would be valuable to experience what you're talking about. To experience that G-d is not in this situation and how do I experience that as a gift?)
As His allowing me to become what needs to be for me as an act of love, and the way He allows that to be is in His withdrawing, the obviousness or overtness of His presence. That's big stuff.
It even seems related to the last two exercises in that one was about recognizing the good and then feeling the lack of it, then praying for it, and one about the power of (inaudubible due to mike moving) the lack and asking to get the experience the, feeling the lack of not having your partner… that's the necessary step towards the fulfillment of it. This is different in that it's just feeling the lack. And knowing that
G-d's in that.
That's the higher level.
Yeah. That's the higher level. So, how can we create a setting where people could just experience that?
I want to say, first of all, regarding what I introduced last week, which was about accepting and being whole with the experience of the chisaron as a place from which the awareness of the need will lead to prayer or action, was very significant for me. I did it more than once. Accepting that is so crucial, and to do it open-heartedly and not in bitterness. Crucial. So I hear you, I think that can work, what you're describing. I think like, maybe just calling upon people to do that. Usually people need an interpretation, like a reframing to know that Hashem is in that. You know what I mean? I thought He was gone, but really He was there. And I see how He was there in those moments that were so painful and dramatic and difficult for me. That's usually how that kind of forgiveness is accessed. Wholeness with things is accessed. But here we're talking about before that. This act of withdrawal itself is the act of love. Giving me the opportunity to become an even more unique and different being.
Right, this is the soil in which I am flourishing that G-d has given me. So pratically how to get there. So this is the idea that I have…
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: A workshop on lack and fulfillment of the need.
Episode Transcript
(Addressing Mary Rose) You’re wondering when a person becomes haughty and takes up all the space, so to speak, there’s no room, no need for another. There’s only me. Or I’m perfect—aren’t any parts in me that need perfection, that need to be spoken to , and raised up, or fixed, etc. that level of haugtiness, you’re wondering, does that erase the malchut, denying the malchut. I want to tell you that you’re on to something.
One of the primary themes in Kabbalah is how separate the malchut is from the rest of the expression of G-d—the malchut ultimately being our consciousness of receiving His goodness and integrating and organizing it into a spoken and expressed reality which is what we live. So consistently through Kabbalah, the question of the consciousness of the Divine which becomes embodied; you see yourself as separate. How much of knowing yourself as separate denies your being at one with G-d? Can you exist one at the same time as an atah who is spoken to, as an atah and can speak to G-d as an atah, and one at the same time know that you are also a very part of Him and living in His life. Well, not even living in His life, but there is nothing other than Him. So that question, the more we split off into consciousness of separateness, without being aware that it is He Who is giving us life, that’s called in Kabbalah kitzut b’nitiot. Cutting off the saplings from their source. The Maharal explains… that the consciousness has to be like a root and a tree and we’re like the tree growing up out of the root. So the upper part of the tree, lives its own life it’s got its leaves, and they’re turning toward the sun, and they’re turning away from the sun, and it’s doing all kinds of things and they’re making food, etc. But as long as it’s made awareness that it’s a tree that is growing out of the root so then it has not become separate and there is not a kitzutz b’netiot. And the Kabbalistic language the malchut has not become a separate consciousness losing its awareness of being one with its root. When we’ve become haughty, so it’s like (slaps hands) cut off, like the trunk and the branches, are like, well I have my own life. And this has tremendous indications about how we relate to our own life. To everything. Including, one of the most sign applications is our ability to forgive. Our ability to let go of resentments, which is one of the most profound blocks that we experience, rests on our ability to see that all always been is G-d, and all this is being energized by the source which is love. So then when I can see what’s happening in my life, and this other person has been sent by G-d as being an expression of G-d and of G-d’s love, then we are able to really forgive. But as long as you live kitzutz b’netiot, with the malchut as like, I’m one separate entity and there’s one separate entity, etc. then the forgiveness becomes “it’s okay, I’m willing to let go,” or whatever. No it’s like mamash, been His love all the time. This the Ramchal teaches. He teaches, like that’s the main thing a person needs to know. The Ramchal says how in the tzimtzum, how it’s drawn is always a circle, and then there’s a line that starts at the top, and goes down to the bottom. He says that the reason it goes down to the bottom, is because it’s the way of G-d that He turns all evil into good. So that everything that’s happened along the way, along that line, in the end feeds right back into the wholeness of G-d’s life, which is to say, that it never really left that. Like, that’s the only thing it could mean. When you look back you could say it was all headed right here. Now, as soon as you separate it, then you’ve lost that…. And the Ramban explains, that’s what it means to build the golden calf,… that’s what it meant to take the fruit from the tree….
(Chaya: Teaching about distance and closeness with others. There’s a Geshtalt exercise it’s very powerful even though it’s very simple. You’re standing in one place, and you have a partner that walks towards you and you experience what it’s like to tell that person to stop, I mean from a distance, the other side of the room. You tell them to come as long as you feel comfortable and then tell them to stop. And all the while you have the consciousness of “What does this bring up for me to tell this person to stop? What does that feel like? Or to tell them to come towards me? What comes up?…” No talking, just you telling stop or go. Basically inviting that person as close or not close as you want to experience. For me it was a powerful experience. I’m thinking about how to do this with your partner, or thinking about a hard issue someone you had an argument with, thinking about an issue, as you’re doing it, and trying it again, thinking differently. Like nice things. And notice in your body, have this person approaching. When you ask someone to come close, you’re making space…When I ask her to come close, I’m giving up space. So just on that theme. )
(Sara Talia: …Looking at ourselves and thinking, are we really ready to be in relationship with others, and therefore to be in relationship with Hashem, so I’ve noticed that occasionally with myself, and experiencing broken trust in the past, and being hurt, and having a hard time knowing when something’s real and being able to have that trust and being able to have that opening in myself for a new relationship. So, I got (inaudible) when you said that, Okay, do I feel despondent and abandoned? Do I feel abandoned by other people? Is that like a bigger picture of an aspect of Hashem that I’m struggling with or an aspect of my reality of my life that I’m blaming Him for, like Hashem, why did you do that, why did You make me go through this pain or this experience, and being able to try to figure out where to go on from there. That’s a hard one.)
(Someone else: Thank you for saying that) (Sara Talia laughing. “Reality check.”)
….
(Chaya: I think it’s been ten minutes…)
It has been ten minutes. I don’t know what they’re planning.
(We’ll see what people want to do… I’ve noticed that doing exercises where everybody goes outside disperses the energy.)
Correct. My suspicion is—
(Writing.Yeah, but I want to tell you about it anyway) Well if people choose it,….
So when you hear them all saying she lo asani ishah, it’s almost like a verbalization of what biologically had to occur when the baby was in embryo, there being a shift, and I should find out more about this, how this works, but maybe a chromosomal shift—maybe you can explain it? You know biology— of declaring shelo asani ishah, and the woman says, sheasani kirtzono. She’s more present to reality as it is, but getting back to your question,and I don’t want to take up all the time talking, although I’m like a non-stop talker once you put people in front of me (laughing)…but the other thing you pointed out, the trial of wait, I’m just an atah to the other man? I always point out to people that the prime position in chazal is that first man was an androgynous, so, so to speak, they were both experiencing that consciousness. So it’s not relevant there being man and woman. And then they got split. There’s no question that you’re an embodiment of feminine, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t also share those other aspects, of that creation of an consciousness by virtue by the longing that you also in your soul root experienced, there was no other, no possibility of it…
(Questions)
Yeah, there is a feminine and masculine principal in the world… but I’m saying these things mix, that because you’re embodied as woman that all you have is the womanly aspect. They mix around. It would be better if we could use a non-sexual language. I don’t know exactly what to do, to be honest, I just talk the truths that I know, and I don’t know exactly what to do to make that feel good, but these are phenomena. I think I told you in the past. I think I was telling you, Baria Schachter was taking Chinese medicine, and they were teaching him about the yin and the yang, and after this long lecture about yin and yang, and feminine and masculine, he looked at his teacher (starting to crack up) in his individual way, and he said, “So tell me, do yin and yang love each other?” (Laughter) It’s like a Jewish, not Chinese question, do yin and yang love each other? Like what’s the energetic root here? And when that happens, yin and yang love each other, then the question of male/female, am I on top, am I on bottom, how is this working, disappears. That’s what we were talking about last year when the complaint about the moon which she introduced, kind of melts away and it becomes a realization of a mutuality of living where being giver, being taker, being recipient, being provider no longer creating hierarchy, because the experience is of one organism. So the experience of one organism, that becomes an inappropriate nomenclature. An inappropriate use of naming. (inaudible) more or less, there’s one thing here. Yeah, there are two kings and one crown. Yeah, there really can be such a thing. If we had the consciousness of crown. Consciousness of crown is when everything has ended, now because a new beginning. Just to bring it back to the beginning of the shiur. Like when the end point because the beginning, that’s when crown comes in. We’ll have a brief biological explanation.
(In the embryology, the fetus begins, if you look at the reproductive organs, begins as a urogenital sinus, which is like androgynous. And then it develops into female, into male. But the potential for each is already in the DNA. Potential for both. Yes. Because when the sperm fertilizes, the sperm has the XX or the XY, and the female, the egg, has the XX, so when it combines, either you have the XX or XY because it’s the Y that comes from the male. So the potential is there, but in the development, it looks androgynous in the beginning, and then it develops into female, and into the male. )
Wow, so that picture of how man is created, is mamash how it happens to every one of us, where we’re both, and then become one, choosing our way. Wow.
I did hear, though, that the primary base is a female one, you’re saying not so. (No, the potential is already there from the beginning. So it develops because of the DNA which is like the basic [inaudible] (that give the potential) (Chaya: But what about the fact that the ege is XX always, and the sperm is either XY or XX, so the sperm itself has this variability to it.) Right, but the egg, is the base line, so then the sperm has to come in so to speak, and say, she lo asani ishah, or she asani kirtzono , I’ll just leave things as they are. Or, shelo asani ishah, I gotta make a stand and become male. Everyone laughing) We’ll put that into the siddur commentary (more laughing) with pictures!
(Chaya presenting choices, the issue of lack in our lives, meditation and writing. Or going outside more embodied, and experience the teachings as an embodied experience and taking up space.)
(Chaya: So there are so many thing in Rav Daniel’s shiurim, what do you jump on the flesh out, and then what do you take home that impacts the rest of your day. So last week, and there are themes of it in this week, really impacted my day on a day-to-day basis. It was on the theme of lack, and the parallel of the two stories. First, the story of Adam, and how he was seeing the animals, but he decided, “I want my couple…” –kaful in Hebrew is double—so he sees the animals couple and he feels the lack of “Wow, I don’t have that” and so he sees a necessary ingredient for then G-d being able to fulfill the lack. And that story paralleled the story about the rain, and about how man noticed the good of rain, and felt the lack of rain, and then how G-d gave the rain—that was G-d’s plan from the get-go, to implant the lack in order that man should feel it and pray and bring it down. And that somehow, this is one of the equations of existence where G-d sets up a situation where we feel lack, in order that G-d can feel it.[1] and you know the boray nefashot prayer, that we say after we eat. Thank you G-d, You created all of these creatures with all of our lacks, and that You can fulfill them. That’s what we say after we eat, because eating itself is, or hunger itself, is such an experience of lack, that we need to fulfill it. It’s such a clear, visceral, embodied sense of lack that we get to experience several times a day. So that becomes a template for that prayer and that idea, it’s clearly expressed there. And we can express that in all areas of our lives where we feel lack. And for me, it’s very powerful, because I love feeling guilty. So if I feel lack, then I immediately feel guilty about the fact that I’m feeling lack because I’m so blessed, and everything is G-d, and how dare I feel lack, so I get all down on myself whenever I feel lack, chutzpah, so for me, I have issues with lack. On the one hand I feel it in a big way: I have jealousies, and I have desires, and on the other hand I feel really bad about the fact that I feel jealous, or about the fact that I feel like G-d’s not giving me something. So it’s this kind of quandary about how to experience lack, and so the beautiful things about these Torah for me was able to put it in a frame of “G-d put you in this quandary, G-d gave you this experience of feeling lack for a reason.” So you can feel it, and pray to G-d, and G-d can fulfill it, and you can have awareness G-d as the Other who fulfills your needs and G-d can awareness being that Source of chesed. And that’s just part of that relationship. So it was very comforting to put it in the framework of the holy, this thing that brings up such negative feelings in my life. So I feel like we could take a moment and focus on some place where you’re feeling you’re lacking, you’re not getting something you need, you’re not getting what you want, and we’re doing a little meditation on it, and then a little writing.)
So the first step is to conjure up an aspect of our lives where we feel lack. And get that in our minds. Whether it’s a picture thing, or mulling about it…?
(Yeah, we’ll do this as like a guided meditation. Yeah, in terms of evoking an experience of where you felt this lack…. )
To look at something I really want to be having, and to look at it in my mind as having been realized and feeling how much I want it? Or let’s say, I’d like to be impacting shul communities. So would I imagine myself impacting a shul community, and davening differently, etc. and then feel the lack that’s missing? Or would I look at myself walking into an empty shul, and having nobody there to listen?
(That’s juicier.)
It’s a lot harder.
(Getting into the pain? Yeah, feeling the pain. And then take moments to pray about it. What good is it to pray without the pain?)
I hear you. So we’re not starting with makir b’tov, and then going into the lack. We’re just emphasizing what we’re missing. That’s okay. (We’re appreciating the lack. Some days you need makir b’tov and some days you need to feel the lack.)
Guided meditation: Feet on the floor….And as you’re breathing in, just invite in awareness about your feeling of great lack now. What is hurting? What are you aching about? It might help to envision the actual incident where you felt this lack. Feel into your emotions about why is it so painful to me why I don’t have this. Feel the tragedy of this lack in your life. And the pathos. And once you’ve really feel you have this in hand, the pain of this, the lack of this, then open up your hands and pray to G-d that G-d should fulfill this need. And remind G-d that G-d is the One who created the lack that it should be filled. And when you feel like you’ve prayed your prayer—take as much time as you need to do this—then imagine G-d fulfilling your need. And when you’re ready, you can write what it looks like in detail, what it looks like, this fulfillment, describing to a “t”, what G-d does to fulfill this need.
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript
I have a desire to share something with G-d’s help that will open up a different aspect of the kind of work that we’ve been doing. It’s from a teaching in Chassidut of the Alter Rebbe, the first Rebbe of Chabad, third generation of Chassidut, and I believe that these passages will, b’ezrat Hashem, open up perspective… For me these teachings are very connective in terms of getting an access to the spirit of longing. In the context of what we’ve been seeing, we’re continuing to access aspects of living that inform us of the nature of love of G-d and what brings that about, and how it’s rooted in the nature of reality and of Creation, whereas last year our focus was primarily how that works in the intereaction between people…What we’re focusing more on now is how that works between us and Hakadosh Baruch Hu and seeing how those things parallel each other.
We’ve been looking at, through the story of Gan Eden, the way Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so to speak, sets himself up for “right relationship” with man, he sets himself up for a loving relationship with man. And He does this from the very beginning, from the very first act in which His first speaking to man is described in the chumash as “Vayikach,” as a taking. And that taking is interpreted by the rabbis as not being a physical taking, but as an emotional, spiritual taking whereby G-d made Himself, so to speak, vulnerable and susceptible to the possibility that man might say “no,” and basically tempted and seduced him into going into Garden of Eden, so that Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so to speak, evacuated the space of His all-encompassing, all-present power to allow for man to have a moment during which he would be able to choose freely. That moment is called in kabbalistic teachings “the revelation of His name.” Because in the moment of His having vacated a space for our choosing, so He vacated a space for our consciousness of otherness. And that is the revelation of what is called atah, you, as in when we give a bracha we say “baruch atah Hashem,” which in the kabbalistic teachings is a revelation dafka from baruch, which is the source of—the pool of—all present goodness of G-d to atah, which is “you,” which is the availability and possibility of you, which—as we will see when we view Aharon from this perspective— is the introduction of chesed. This is how the Ari teaches the bracha, which comes from the Zohar in Parshah Trumah: atah is the introduction of chesed, which in a different language would be the introduction of the possibility of otherness, because chesed requires that there be an other to give it to. That’s not to say that we’re not sometimes the other to give it to, as Mishlei teaches, “Gomel…chesed.” An ish chesed can also be someone who does good to himself. That’s also part of chesed as b’ezrat Hashem we’ll also explore.
But the point is, when you’re in a state that there is an other that you are able to do good to, or enhance the existence of, even within yourself—higher self to lower self, more conscious being to less conscious being, divine soul to animal soul. All of these are modes within which we are actually gomel chesed to ourselves, whether it be by contemplating divine matters, and thereby arousing the heart to have passion for G-d. That would be one example of being gomel chesed with your animal soul, or with your embodied passions.
Putting that aside, the point is that the revelation of atah is the realization of there being an other and distinct consciousness which is differentiated from G-d in His utter and complete simplicity of presence and putting it back down to the level of the pasuk in the chumash. This is our realization of G-d, when He first speaks to us, He takes us—and again as Rashi says, he uses beautiful things to say to us so that we should be tempted to go into Gan Eden—he takes us, “Vayikach, ”which is the word that appears in the Chumash as being the word of marriage: “Ki yikach ish ishah.”
It was a very important realization that we note this, that our first interaction with G-d is one which later becomes revealed and realized in the marriage relationship between two people. And this possibility of relationship comes from the allowance for an other in their freely choosing state, which requires a consciousness of differentiation and of being, at least potentially, “at odds with.” And it’s also the revelation of language, because the word atah—alef, tav, heh—is actually a reference to the alef-bet. Alef, the first—tav, the last. Heh is the five letters which double when they come at the end of a word. The ma’am sa’pach. The nun is a nun sofi, the mem is a mem sofi, the tsadi is a tsadi sofi, and the chaf is a chaf sofi. There actually is an atah, and the five that come at the end, and those five are a reference to the last heh in G-d’s name which is malchut, which is the ability for things to end where they always because doubled over, which is a great spiritual secret. When things come to an end in life, they are actually doubling over, like in a transmigration of a soul, where there’s a gilgul—literally it means a doubling over, a rolling over. You get to the end and you roll over. We talk about people rolling over in their graves. Gilgul means you’re rolling over into another reality. The end reality has arrived, the new reality is now going to begin. This is the deep secret of how the malchut, the feminine of receiving at the end becomes the crown, the beginning of the next era, and the next stage. In all the worlds it’s like that, and in all of life it’s like that, if you think about it, and hal’vai that should be conscious of it when we get to the end chapters of our lives. When you look back at your life, you realize that there are chapters in your life and when you are able to relate to life that way when you’re in it, then you’re mamash like an enlightened soul. The attitude of “A new chapter has just come to end and a new one is about to begin” is a far better attitude than “I just lost everything that I ever had.” Boy, if we could shift into knowing that, then we have shifted into the secret of the doubled- letters, the ma’an sa’pach. Of the heh that comes at the end of atah, which is the doubling over of the end, so that now a new beginning will be revealed. And that new beginning relies very deeply on our consciousness and our openness to it. It will happen faster if we’re more open to it, and we’re connected to that possibility. The blockage is usually our own, and about our fears about having to let go….
I want to point out that the Jewish people actually worshipped avodah zarah, idolatry, for the first time when they lost that consciousness. And they saw that Moshe Rabbeinu had died, or so they thought, if you remember they waited the forty days, which is gestation—forty weeks of gestation—and forty days during which the embryo becomes an entity. The rabbis say that the first forty days is just water, like the forty days that the Flood comes down in Parshat Noach, and then it becomes an entity, and Moshe Rabbeinu didn’t come back at the end of the forty days. They said, “He’s dead.”
Then the people withdrew and they created an ensconced position, meaning they created an idol that made them comfortable that things aren’t going to change. This is going to allow us to go back to where we came from, to go back to the womb of Egypt, the holy cows/calves of Egyptian worship. If one loses the consciousness of “I have not become ended here”, but rather, “I become opened up to the new chapter of opening”, so then one is able to enter the heh. This is crucial to atah, in the experience of you.
It says, “Atah Cohen l’Eyl Elyon.” The Cohen, who is Aharon, who experiences this most profoundly, and that’s why he becomes the great harbinger of love in the Jewish people, as we’ll see, b’ezrat Hashem, atah cohen l’el elyon, In other words, “You-ness” allows for Cahuna. You can become a servant, a priest, by living that consciousness rightly. Serving the One who has given you free choice and free choosing. You can become a servant and recognize and realize that there has not been a full and utter severance, severing of connection, but rather I can maintain that connection by being a servant to You, and maintain that consciousness by being a servant to You.
The first revelation of G-d’s name and the possibility of naming in general is in the revelation of these letters, and that is why atah is alef tav heh, which is the alphabet, it is the introducing of language, as we saw in Adam HaRishon calling the animals’ names, it’s the beginning of the dawning of the realization within him that there may be an other, and the recognition that it will not be an animal. And I say this very bluntly-- that needed to be a realization on his part. He is not seeking a partner who is basically a servile animal, he could have had that, —and to put it bluntly and rather disgustingly—he could have satisfied any physical urges. But he could not satisfy the real issue which is being alone and having a desire that there should be an other. By this, he creates the possibility and vacates the space, paralleling G-d Who vacated the space by saying to man, Go into the Garden of Eden, and man being able to say no… and G-d having to attract him into it is His vacating the space. It is a revelation of the story of the tzimtzum. And then man in his responding already begins the act of marriage.
But the point is, man already had to experience that by being created alone, even though the final point is that there should be two, and so G-d first thinks to create two, because the point is that there should be a reality in which there is coupling, but in order that there should be coupling, as is brought down in this world, is that he must be created as one. Because when he is created alone, then he learns the secret of vacating space, and being able to suffer through his loneliness, and alone- ness and his awareness of his need that there should be something out there with whom he could connect and have relationship. And so that is a crucial stage, and one which we often look over and Chaya brought it to my attention in a mouch more personal way… That the awareness of those processes is crucial for us to be able to actually become who G-d wants us to be become. And to be able to own that experience of lack, not fear it, not try to cover it over or dull the ache, or ignore it, but to be in that and move into that allows for the possibility of an other becoming fully the other with whom we will have that relationship that G-d dreams of us being able to have. So that man, in seeing the animals, comes to the realization both of his vulnerability, he needs something—a tzimtzum, waiting for a light to enter that tzimtzum—the light of the other. So it will not be an animal, l’havdil. And only then can G-d realize the dream that He has of there being two. And there cannot be that other unless man fully experiences the ache of the lack. He actually creates that possibility by virtue of his being willing to be in the space of “I don’t know what’s coming, I don’t know where it’s going to come from, I don’t know how it’s going to happen.” All I know is that I have to let go of where I am now so that the new realization can occur. And that new realization will be the one with whom I can have right relationship. And he enters into that through the vehicle of language. Language is itself the expression of his entering into that realization. He begins to talk. And in talking, he becomes one whose consciousness is atah. That there is another to whom I will speak. And so woman actually becomes the embodiment of that realization. And so the rabbis teach that ten portions of speaking came into the world and nine of them women got. It’s kind of a laconic comment, it’s okay to laugh at it a little bit. It’s also a deep realization about women. She is, in a sense, language. Because she is the atah consciousness which rests in the world in there being an other. And that’s why the story is told in that rather odd fashion, and so Adam has to pass through that lack. And the Rambam explains that he is experiencing the ache of the lack by seeing all of the animals and the possibility of there being an other living creature with whom he will have relationship. It’s not with the plants. It’s with animals and their coupling. And that, then, brings about the arousal in him of desire to be with an other.
This is a divine process. When we cease to experience ourselves as being the only one, on all levels, and this is not a simple project, and are able to become vulnerable and available in that way, then in a sense, we create a mate. From both sides. He or she becomes revealed as that possibility, which becomes the atah.
And, by the way, in every bracha that you make, when you say, baruch atah, according to the Ari z”l that is actually the kavanah of the bracha. Baruch is the reference to father and mother, or that which births a new reality, who are together in their being, so to speak, and therefore they are a pool of possibilities. It is an undifferentiated pool of possibility. And then atah, that there is a You, which in a sense is in a divine world, is the potentiality of chesed. There would be One to Whom good would be done. And in our self-reflection, that would be us. It’s the possibility of there being an us. So that we can say to G-d, “You.” Of course, we’re talking to G-d, I mean, let’s not get too confused about the kabbalistic interpretation— it’s us talking to G-d. But you see how beautifully parallel it is. Because it’s us talking to G-d from the state of “You,” of our saying to G-d, “You.” But our possibility to say to G-d You is itself a direct product of G-d’s having revealed His possibility of saying “you.” Because in His coming to allow for someone to whom he would say “You”, we are created in a consciousness of we are separate from Him, and can say to Him, “You”… It’s not really complicated, you just have to get used to a certain kind of thinking, that when G-d said “you”, he made chesed, the possibility of awarding an other goodness and existence. And, when we say “You”, we’re living out His dream, so to speak, that there would be one who would say to Him, “You.” And the parallel to that in our own life of love is when we vacate a space that there can be an other who will say “you”, so then indeed that other comes to manifestation. But we have to be willing for ourselves to hear them say to us, “you”.
It’s one thing for you to say to that mate, “you.” But for your mate to say to you, “you,” that’s another madraga of being present to another person as being the you in their lives. To be a you in someone else’s life, means that someone else is in the center saying “you” to you. That’s a big thing, I mean for us to be in the world saying you to G-d, as if we’re the center point saying to Him You. So to have an other in your life to say to you, atah, is a shift which is …the realization of k’negdo, of there being an other who will stand in opposite to you as a k’negdo, and in being opposite to you has the power to refuse you or to accept you. And sees you as living outside themselves. That’s the consciousness of withdrawal, which is the great humility, which is so crucial, and which is what chazal mean when they say that G-d created the world in His humility. He said na’aseh adam— wild thing for a monotheistic picture for G-d to say in the plural, “we shall make man.” So the rabbis say he was nimlach. He made himself a malchut. That’s what it means in Hebrew, but it actually means he took advice, in a less literal translation. And the rabbis say that we are to learn from there the great humility of G-d. And so if I were giving you a mussar shmooze, I would say therefore it is always a good idea to take advice. Which is also true, but the penimiut of it is that He created the malchut. Nimlach.. Rashi actually brings it in: Na’aseh adam b’tzalmenu. He created a malchut. What does it mean he creates a malchut? He creates an other. There’s a king and there’s a subject. There’s a relationship, there’s a sharing of a reality. That’s what malchut is. So that in order to create man, he needed to move into the ability to, so to speak, take advice. That it is no longer all Him. He wouldn’t be able to create man from any other condition of knowing all, so to speak, because then He would be filling all the space. So He had to turn to an other and say, na’aseh adam. That turning is in itself already the creation of the space within which man would be now existant. That’s called nimlach, which in Hebrew means “to take advice,” but in the nifal, in the passive form, “he made malchut”, basically. He became a Melech the moment he took advice, ironically; that shifting made room for another. There couldn’t have been any other way for man to be created. If Hashem had done it by fiat, then it would have been from a state of there not being room for an other. But when Gd was m’tzamtzem Himself, ki v’yachol, taking advice from, that itself is the shift that allows space for an other.
I think that has practical implications about recognizing when you’re going at things from a place of fiat, and when from a place of acceptance and availability to, and that will have a tremendous impact on the space that is available to another. And G-d, in making us this way, actually made us live out, so to speak, His life. Because in our experiencing the depth of relationship in this pathway, we are actually enhancing and increasing the very space which allows us to be here. In the way we are conscious of reality and creation, we are actually affecting it and changing it. If we can assume that for this moment, what you think and the way you think actually makes it happen one way or another. The more we are in that kind of available space, the more we create an available space for us to be in relationship with G-d. Did I say this clearly enough for this frequency? (Laughing) It’s a certain frequency. In a condition where our relationship to others is pushing them away, or contestual, being challenged by them as antithetical to, impossible to relate to, don’t get it, what are you about, pull back, don’t want anything to do with this. All of the aspects of orlah, that cut you off of ralah, ralah, ralah, ralah, all that stuff. The way we do that with other people, so G-d also withdraws. (Sounds of understanding among the participants.) Because the place that is made available for G-d is when we are in the very consciousness that He, so to speak, has, which makes us creatable.
In other words, if I am always pushing you away, so then I am actually declaring, I only want space for me. The more I declare that I only want space for me, so then that’s the consciousness that’s in the world, only want space for me. Now I’m going to make Him like, human. OK, so G-d says, I’ll have that consciousness, too, I’ll only want space for me. And then He, so to speak, is not relating to, this is the reality which chazal calls, that he walks with us, b’keri, he becomes uncaring. And then, when our awareness and the way we relate to life is the realization and the revelation of His presence in the world, if we are aware of others as deserving space, that we’re all part of one inter-being and connectedness, then that’s G-d’s consciousness in the world. He—so to speak— lives through the way we are aware of things. And I suppose I should bring you more proofs of this. That’s why the Rabbis say the one character trait about which G-d says, I can’t live with this person, is a ba’al ga’avah. So the standard interpretation is, because he’s so haughty, he’s pushed G-d away. And that’s true. But I want you to understand that it’s even deeper than that. It’s in his haughtiness, he fills all the space. I fill all the space when I’m haughty. There’s no room for anyone else. I got it all. Okay. Great. So, now you’re creating a divinity of also, I fill all the space. There’s no room for anyone else. And then life becomes devoid of His being here. Because you, so to speak, disappear from the screen of his involved consciousness. Just like the other has disappeared from the screen of your involved consciousness…The more we are able to say atah, the more he says atah. And the more he says atah, then the more we are able to be here. And the more we are able to be here, then the more we are able to live with him and with the consciousness of Him. Ultimately, the end point is also living and knowing the other aspect, which is the aspect of ezer…Up until now we’ve been exploring and expanding upon withdrawal, need, vulnerability, and atah, language and letters, etc. Now, Debbie, yes, save us!
(The one thing that doesn’ sit well for me is…we’re saying I only want the space for me and Hashem says I only want the space for me…)
I put it in “tit for tat” human language. It’s not that G-d is being resentful (But I think there’s an important nuance there of Hashem is still trying)
Oh I see. You’re absolutely right. In describing it that way, I’m simply trying to emphasize the sort of level of “overt unconscious divine involvement.” In other words, G-d’s moving things forward is always happening. There’s nothing without Him creating it at this very moment. We all know that. We all have states of more divine awareness, and states where it’s in a dimunition. That’s impacting what’s happening. There’s less love, there’s less connectivity. There’s less divine consciousness in the world because we ourselves are conscious-ing that way. The Baal Shem Tov says, Hashem… al yad yminecha. G-d is the shadow over my right hand. In Tehillim that means that G-d is guarding you. You’re in His shadow, He’s hovering above you, and He’s shadowing over your right hand which is your hand of activity. He’s guiding you. The Ba’al Shem Tov says, there’s an opposite meaning also that says that G-d is your shadow. He is the shadow of your right hand. Meaning, as you act, and as you relate, and really as you love or don’t love, which is the right hand, so G-d in like, responds. Responds in kind like a shadow moves with you. It’s almost the opposite reading. It’s not He’s protecting and guiding you, but rather what you choose or determine where He is or is not, so that the more you, so to speak, block Him, so the less He is present. So Debbie is right, there’s a level of G-d’s presence which is unchanging and always present. Always commitment, never giving up, never leaving. But I’m talking about on more overt levels. Is He with me? Not with me? I feel abandoned, despondent. Check yourself well. When you’re in that condition. Check yourself well, in terms of how well are you with others. Are you abandoning them? How are you with your readiness for Him to be here with you, and how much are you ready for there to be others in your life? You can’t play a game of I’m ready for G-d to be in my life, but not these other people. They’re like bugging me and wasting my time. Your consciousness is not split that way. Not in Jewish thinking, at least. (Student comment) I don’t know what I’m doing at this point (Laughing)
(There seems to be the chicken before the egg thing or the egg before the chicken. It’s hard to say when we have the ability to choose to break patterns or take Hashem in because up until a certain age, we’re not so responsible for that…)
You’re wondering where the level of choice is here? Like how will I make that shift It seems to me that part of making that shift is Hakadosh Baruch Hu showing His face and my knowing that He is available, something like that? After the class, we’ll stay around for a workshop…Why don’t we wait with that?
I’d like to share with you this piece from Admor Hazakeyn, who teaches us about two aspects of this condition of longing that there should be an other, and the introduction of atah…(Opening up to Shir Hashirim)
The Rabbis teach us that Shir Hashirim is Kodesh Kadoshim , Holy Of Holies if all the other writing of Torah are holy, this one is Holy Of Holies…It’s very important ot recognize is the way our Temple is constructed both like a home and like a body. Like a home, there’s an entry area, and there’s the table, and the food area, and there’s the bedroom inside. And in this bedroom live, so to speak two keruvim, two youngsters who are in an embrace on the Holy Ark. No two ways about it. And the Rabbis tell us that when the Jewish people would come for the holiday meeting, the communing with G-d, which by the way is the meaning of the word “moed.” Communing, from the language of v’aad, viud, it’s a designated time in the sense of making a date. So they would come, and the cohanim would open up the gates to all the people who were standing outside, and draw the curtain on the Holy of Holies so that everyone can look inside and see the two keruvim in an embrace, and say to the Jewish people, see how dear you are to G-d. Re’eh…hamakom. So it is not a misnaming that Rabbi Akiva, who says that all the other writings are kodesh, but this one is Kodesh Kadoshim. It’s the prime rod, or the center of column, or the innermost chamber of all of G-d’s revelations. That’s important to realize, and the Zohar actually teaches in another teaching that something that’s important for us to know which is sorely missed in our conceptions. The innermost workings in G-d’s name in the yud, with the heh and the vav, and the heh. It’s aleph, heh, vet, heh, In other words, the inner chamber of yud kay vav kay is alef heh vet heh, which, of course, is ahava. Shem havayah, which is gematria of 26 is in a sense, the doubling over of ahava, which is gematria of 13, so that in shem, yud key vav jey, he becomes revealed outwards, but the inner chamber is ahava, love. The Zohar teaches it’s the root of all things…. That teaching means that the innermost chamber of all of existence is love. Which would make perfect sense, given that the Kodesh Kadoshim rests on the planet in the place from which the planet was created. The rabbis say that it was the heart, or the navel, of the universe.
So get this picture and get it clear. In the navel of the universe, so to speak, there’s different opinions about where man starts developing from, so they’re using different imageries to describe what’s happening. So the place of the Kodesh Kadoshim is the starting point of creation, that first nekudha. I’m going to use a language now that Ramban uses. I just love this language. The Ramban says that the world began with the nekudah…mamash. The world began as a small subtle or fragile dot, a spot that has nothing of substance. So the world began. That happens, so to speak, at the place of Kodesh Kadoshim, on some level, and then the world expands out from there. Which by the way, in terms of physics nowadays—
An entire universe can be collapsed in a pinhead. Are you aware of this? We are 99.9% empty space. If you were to take a basketball and put it into a football field, so you would have a neutron, and then the circumference of the atomic particle would be thousands of miles away from the things that’s revolving around it. Matter is primarily empty space. It’s just that our consciousness experiences it as a solid. And the entire universe, were it to be collapsed into the entire amount of matter that’s in it, is estimated to be about the size of a pinhead. That is ridiculous stuff. Forget it. Don’t even try to think about it. I don’t know why I’m getting into it, I just like looking at these pictures in my head.
But the point is that that nekudah is the Kodesh Kadoshim, the starting point of the universe. Note that that starting point is represented or manifested in the aron habrit, G-d’s spoken revelation, which are two tablets, which have on it, an embracing angelic double figure. So that’s the core. So when the Zohar says that the core of the word is yud-key-vav-kay, is ahava, he’s really describing something which then becomes energetically embodied in the Kodesh Kadoshim. And spoken in Shir Hashirim. That’s Rabbi Akiva.
So when we say Shir Hashirim asher l’shlomo, so this is the song of all songs, like it’s the Kodesh Kadoshim. Meaning, all the kidushin, all relationships—kedusha has to do with relationship—all specialness, kodesh, all uniqueness, all other-ness, and all possibility of otherness. All of that is rooted in the center one which is the Kodesh Kadoshim, just like all love songs, and the songs of life, that are sung in the exuberance of existence are rooted in this one. It’s all rooted in love. That’s why, that of in all books, the Sefer Haredim, which is an early book, then it didn’t have the same implications it has now, it’s a sefer which has to do with darkeinu tzar, 16th or 15th century, the derech hachushek hashorer. It’s the way of someone who’s impassioned to sing. So that in our love of our Creator, which is so impassioned, one who loves Him with a full heart, will always sing in front of him, just like Moshe, the children of Israel, Miriam, and Devorah, Yehoshua, the children of Korach, and David and Shlomo, who all sung. Maskil yedidut. One who has high consciousness, he will sing a song of endearment, a song of friendship, as it says, Shir HaShirim, asher l’Shlomo. What does it mean, Shir HaShirim? Shir HaShirim, that is, the one that is for Shlomo. For the king, whose peace is his, whose shalom is his, who lives that wholeness. The king who finds peace is the king, as we said, G-d is nimlach, he creates kingship, and an other, he finds peace. He finds peace in there being an other and which there can now be relationship.
Peace is only a relevant concept if there is one to whom you have peace with. (Laughing) It’s nice to have peace on your own, but it’s not really peace, except when the different parts of you are holding together. But peace is a concept that has to do with other. This by the way is why our tefila ends with peace. Peace is the ultimate prayer. It’s a very deep thing People miss this. What’s going on? At the end, we gave G-d praise, then we gave thanks, we made our requests, then we’re done. What’s this business of sim shalom… What, we’re trying to shtup in before the door closes, Wait! I’ve got just one more thing I want to say, just hang on a second, don’t close the door yet, let me in! No, it’s not that we’re trying to make another request. It’s moving into a state which is ultimate prayer. Because ultimate prayer is at one-ness with what is. Fully relating to it and accepting it. It’s an inversion of the way we’re used to thinking of it. But after you’ve gone through the lack, and experienced the lack and asked for it, and been grateful to G-d for what he has given you, then you can be at peace with what is. When that happens, really quite astoundingly, then the doors open. It’s one of these ironies of spiritual life. When I accept it in fullness, then I am able to turn in asking for the shift to occur. At that point I’m not asking, I’m just identifying with Him, so to speak, I’m at one with Him in what He has done. I’m there at peace with it. I don’t know exactly how to describe this in a way that it makes logical sense. But it’s the ultimate state of prayer. Now I’m just at one with You. When you accept it, then you’re with Him, and then you are participant in whatever it is that’s going to happen, and then your will and His will become one and reality then opens up to its sources of goodness.
But sim shalom is ultimate prayer. So Shir Hahirim asher l’shlomo is the ss for the one who has peace. And the two become unified. That then becomes ultimate ezer. We’re in this together, G-d, it’s not just me against you, insisting that you give. We’re together in this. At peace with each other. That’s a peaceful home. That’s shalom bayit. But don’t think you can skip stages, just go to that. Then you end up with distorted religions and spiritualities Praise of G-d as other, asking of him, recognizing that he is the one who indeed gives it, bowing down in thanks to him, and now what? We’re together. (Long silence)
I might just end with the pasuk ends with yeshakeni…piu, so the Zohar teaches that yeshakeni…piu. The reason it specifically talks about kissing, then the breath of each kisser becomes united into one breath, and they, so to speak, breathe each other. This is a very deep teaching of the Zohar, which then teaches that this is where the four letters of the name come from. That there’s a breath out of one into the other that retains part of the breath and gives part over the breath. And so from the other, the same, and those are then the four letters. The breath retained, the breath given, the breath received, the breath given and retained, those are the transmutations of the letters of G-d’s name, but the breaths become one breath. That’s why is yeshakeni…piu, let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth. Which is pihu, peh yud peh and vav, which is the first three letters of G-d’s name, and then the final heh is ki tov…mi yayin because Your love is greater than wine. Wine being the drunkenness of the loss of selfhood and the inability to stand up. I choose to stand up and not be drunken. I choose to stand up so that I can be an other with whom you can have this kiss and this love. And ironically, the rabbis say that the yayin is a reference to the written Torah. That’s the one which is “forced” upon us. It’s reality as it is, in the sense that you don’t have any say in it. There’s not much of an atah there. Better than the yayin of yaino shel Torah, of Torah sHakadosh Baruch Hu’chtav, of the written Torah, yeshakeni…piu, which is Torah sh b’al peh. It’s when Jewish people in knesset Yisrael have a voice and are able to speak words of wisdom that are expression of their soul, in its reverberating with G-d and responding to him. So that’s chazal’s interpretation of that verse. Better than the wine of the Torah is the kissing. Which involves there being an atah and an ani, and it’s really a profound back and forth which occurs in that. But in a sense, the first thought that G-d had that there should be two is indeed that ultimate picture—at least for this created world. The creating of one is in order to create the realization and consciousness that will allow for there to be two by our desire and by our choosing. And indeed, on a very deep level, this is a story of the soul coming into the world, choosing to, so to speak, separate from Him and come into the world, that there should be a level of realization of relationship, that could not be, had this all stayed embedded in its Source.
(Student question) When I am able to say atah to you, and even more, when I am able to live out being said atah to, … when we can really have that, then the consciousness that we create between us is now what’s in the world. We’ve shifted what’s around now, we shift things by the way we relate to them. We shift things in the air, so to speak. One of the impacts, the primary impact of what changes, is how much G-d is present. How close is he? Of course he’s always close. I mean, how much His presence is felt. How much is he shining His face on us? So when we shift into that with others , then He’s like our shadow, so to speak. It’s poor language, but He follows suit. So now, He’s giving us more of saying to us, atah, and making Himself available and present for us to say to Him atah. Because now we’re generating that reality into the Creation.
(So the more I put atah in my relationships in my life, the more Hashem will shine on me…)
Absolutely. That is the energetic core of Creation. That’s what’s happening in the Kodesh Kadoshim. That’s why He wants to show it to us. On one level, nothing’s changed. He was always there. You’re not here. It’s only Him. That’s called da’at elyon. But on the level of da’at tachton, human life, the kav, the line, it’s all up to you. Whether He will be here or not. What things will look like. I’ts hard to live them both at once. We generally live in ratzo v’shov. But there are divine moments when those realities merge. And then there is forgiveness, love, compassion, etc. (But that’s’ the goal, no? To live my life that I don’t exist, but I have to work) To know both of these at the same time. The rabbis asked the question: Which is greater, knowing Talmud, or doing it? You say doing it, so I say knowing it, so there was an argument that went like this for many years. They said, gadol haTorah…ma’aseh how great is the knowing that brings the doing. It’s only great doing because it’s known.
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Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: Opening to the awareness of need, and the ability to find what is good as a connecting point. Man and woman as ezer knegdo, being one with the possibility of being separate beings. And the possbility of language is born from this.
Episode Transcript
We've been exploring by seeing some very primary statmenets in the Chumash about the nature of why we're here in the world. We've been exploring what our having been sent here is for and doing that through in the meantime, through the most basic description that G-d gives us and that has something to do with the rain. Rashi exposed us to what it was that G-d was looking for and why he was withholding the rain. And what Rashi told us is that ther is actaully four stages to a process which is what G-d is waiting there for from us, and that is that we have an awareness and an appreciation and a compassionate knowing and an asking for. And we even did a little work around that last time.
What that taught us was that man's being sent here has to do with those things. That kind of alignment of purpose is very significant for us in life, tha we know what it is that we're walking through life for. It makes a big difference if (I'm thinking) right, I'm here to be noticing the good, and being conscious in a a compassionate way and turning to my Source as the origin and source for the shifts in reality that I am hoping that will occur. If you walk through your day like that, then it's quite different than if you lose orientation in terms of what it is wyou're here for. You can always go back to that first statement of the creation of man to reorient yourself as to what it is that you're in life for. Not that it's easy, but its' a starting point.
We also saw that the point of contact, not sure how much we developed this, but that the point of contact is called something which we call "tov." This is really important. L'hakir b'tov creates communing. To recognize good creates communing, deveikut. Actually the Hebrew word is a lot better than the English one. Deveikut, which is communing. And this is so simply demonstrable, that it's almost worth doing an exercise on it already. If you just think for a moment. Here we are sitting in this class, and it's not always so easy to adjust to being here. You came with what you came with and I have a feeling that some of you have come here with quite a bit this morning, and you're carrying what it is that might stand in the way of actually being present. So here's a very simple thing that you might take along to do. If you have at least an amenable relationship next to you, to turn to them, mamash in three statements, and say three things they need to say in order to be here this morning. Three things I'd like to say in order to be present here this morning…It's really quick. It would be good to spend time writing this, but it's not a day-long workshop. But let me ask you, how many of you feel a little more present by virtue of having said what would help you to feel more present here? Good.
I also want to ask you in terms of right now what we're going to learn? How many of you started out by saying something negative, like I have to drop, or get rid of, or remove something from myself before you got to something positive. Just put up your hands. Katie, are you willing to tell us.
I have to put the switcher on.
To put the switcher on. I oriented myself by saying that there's nothing better that I have to be doing right now than just to be here. I've a million things to do that I've put in my yoman this morning, people to call, answers to questions, and et cetera. Very important for me to say, This is the most important thing for me to be doing right now. Which is something of a removal of something else before I am able to enter in the good that's here. The reason that this is important for me to give over and for you to get a little piece of experience of is because you can come to realize in a simple movement like this is how tov is the connecting point. You see, when you come to tov, you come to It's good to be here, it's a bracha to be here. I know my soul needs this, to be here, or these are teachings that are crucial for my life. To recognize that there is something good locates you in presence. I mean it's, as I said last time, I only say simple things. This is something that everyone knows, but doesn't pay attention to. That it's finding the good in wher I am that makes me connect to the presence of this moment and this place . Finding good in it. Finding good connects.
This is actually a kabbalistic teaching which people don't recognize the beauty of. And that is in kabbalistic teaching, the point of connection is called yesod. Everything we have in life has its abstract in the spiritual, divine world. Everything we have, whether it be love, or restraint, or balance, or ability to overcome, or the ability to accede, or the power of connection, each of these is actually a reflection in life of spiritual principles in abstraction. I'm being very concise right now but I'm also being precise. The point is that if you're familiar with the sefirot, then it will be important for you to know that the sefirah which is called yesod—which means foundation point, point of connection—is also called tov. It's just called tov. And in the verse that we saw last week, where G-d says, lo tov heyot adam lvado, it is not good that man be alone, and if you rememebr there we explored that Rashi then says that this is not good because then there are two reshuyot—and people will forever live in a particlized reality. So that lo tov is actually saying that there is no connection. No good means there's no connection in man being alone.
This is why, by the way, the word orlah, which covers over, is actually rah-lah. It's the same letters as "bad for her." Because disconnection, blockage, separating walls, of of what orlah are, and those separating walls are actually the letters of orlah as rah lah. So that realization is very important as we continue through the teachings that we're learning, because we're taught that in the end of time, when we come back from all we've suffered in exile, so, in chapter 30 of Devarim, so we're told, in verse five, so G-d tells us that he is going to bring us back to the land which we've inherited, v'hitivcha v'hirbecha me avotecha, He'll be good to you and He'll make you greater than even your ancestors were, and then in verse six: umar lashem elokecha et levavcha, v'et levav zarecha v'ahavta hasehm elokecha b'chol levavcha nefshecha lman chayecha. G-d will circumcize your heart which means in the prophet in Yechezkel: v'hesir et levavchem. He is going to remove the orlah or your heart, which means not seeing the good, so that we live a life disconnected. Umal lashem elokecha lvavcha, I'll remove the orlah of your heart with brit milah, and I will then make it possible to love me with all of your heart, with all of your soul, for the sake of your life. The point is at the end of time, that's the vision. The removal of the orlah has to do with removing the attitude or perspective that this is bad. When you shift into this is good—whatever process you need to shift into this is good—I just gave you a very simple one, a moment ago. When I shift into this is good, then I shift into connection. When I shift into connection, then I shift into the possibility of love. until that happens, so then there's no possibility of love. Like the pasuk says, you're going to have to have mal lashem elokecha lvavcha, going to have to circumcize your heart so that you can love Him with all of your heart and all of your soul. It will be possible to have partial love, partial giving myself over to, without this milat halev that G-d is going to do. But the ultimate of it, is going to come by virtue of His having removed that orlah.
So, there's a most amazing thing in the way the Chumash describes how we live. And that is, that everything in how we interact with other, in terms of what its purpose sis and how it works, is paralel to the way in which we interact with G-d. So much so, that you begin to suspect that the possibility of experiencing G-d in a true fashion depends upon the nature of how you're interacting with other people. Now the love that you experience between you and G-d, whether it be G-d's love for you or Your love for Him, is going to be modeled by and in miniature through the nature of our relationships with each other. So take a look, for instance, at the way that the Torah describes the next few verses around man's needing to be created. In chapter two of Bereshit. G-d has made man, He has declared that it's not good for man to be alone, going to make ezer knegdo, something we'll come back to look at. And here comes a most bizarre story. So in verse eighteen again. So G-d said, it's not good that man be alone, I'll make an ezer knegdo, and so, next thing you'd expect would be for G-d to create out of the ground or out of man or from some place—his wife. That would make the most sense. And yet in chapter nineteen it says, So G-d created out of the ground all of the beasts of the earth, all of the birds of the heavens, and He brought them to man, to see what they would name them. And everything He named them, that became its name. And then man called names to all the animals, all the birds, and all the beasts, but he could not find for himself an ezer knegdo.
Now, was someone expecting it to be different? Was it going to be a camel? A horse? Come on! What is the Chumash doing here? What is G-d doing? We know the end of the story What's going to happen is man is going to need a woman, someone who is like him in some way. What advantage, what gain is there going to be here by parading all the animals in front of him, before He gives him his wife? Doesn't make any sense. And why is it that language becomes so significant here before man is able to find him ezer knegdo? What is happening here? If you look very simply at the story, is a precise parallel to the very first way that G-d met man, that we talked about last time.
You see, for man now to be standing alone and having the animals paraded in front of him, is going to arouse something in him. As long as he is standing alone in the world. As long as he is his own separate entity of person, so then there is no arousal of need. As long as man is standing alone, and there is no exposure to the possibility of a mate, so then there is no arousal of need. It's very simple. Were it to have been that G-d made man together with woman, or that G-d would make man without woman, either way, without the parading of animals, and then he would make woman and put her right down in front of him, there w ould be no desire, because there would be no experience of the need for the shift out of the experience of heyot adam lvado (19:53).
So actually, the parading of animals in front of man does one simple thing. It makes him aware of something which is outside of him in a relational fashion. And look how interesting it is. Man is living in a world with a great deal of vegetation. We've had a description of Gan Eden. Why doesn't man call names to the trees? All we have is man calling names to the animals. Isn't that curious? After all, it could have been that he would have looked around and called trees trees, and called grass grass, and called riverse rivers, I mean there's a lot of stuff going on in Gan Eden, there's a lot to talk about. Might not have who to talk to, but he's got what to talk about. Amazing! He doesn't talk about any of it. He doesn't give any names, doesn't relate to it. The only thing he relates to are the animals that are being paraded in front of him after the declaration has been made Lo tov liyhot adam lvado.
Are there female animals
Actually there are some shocking things that the Rabbis say about what actually went on. One of them, which is actually one of the less shocking ones, was, they mated, he saw that they were in pairs, but the point is not sexual arousal, although that's obviously a relevant factor, but the point is that the world is pairs. You don't see that in trees. You don't see that in flowers, unless you are one of those people who study flowers. You don't see it in grass. But you do see it in animals. So G-d parades in front of him those who are overtly paired. And then he gets the idea. And what happens, most astoundingly, is that language is born. Because language is born in the awareness of other, in a way in which the possibility of relating to him is present. I know will leave the enclosed solopsistic world of self-enclosure in which I have no speech, that which is in a sense, either non-connecting or just connecting with all in a way in which there is no need for language. It could go either way. You could just batel in complete self-abnegation and connected to all, or you can be completely autistic and connected to nothing. Not meaning people who have autism—I'm not sure that's a correct application of the term given what we now know more and more about what's going on with autistics, but the simple meaning of the word, to be enclosed, and disconnected. Either way, there is no space for language. Right? Anyone who's had a deep meditative experience knows that there's a touching of an experience which is pure consciousness in which there is no language, and there is an experience of no language when—I just got nothing to say to you. In either direction, the formation of a particular connecting pattern or possibility is called dibur, or kriyat shem, calling a name.
So there's a quite amazing parallel here. Man is becoming aware of the outside of him, that there are other possibilties or selfhood, or at least of life that can be connected to. I think it's important for women to know this. That the Raabis say that there were ten portions of talk that came down to the world. I suppose they came down to the world at the moment that man started talking. Well, one of them men got, and nine, the women got. And it's true, women are a lot more talkative than men, they just are. I'm not saying they all are, but it's a feminine principle. You just have to be careful. This is what the Rabbis teach. That something about woman, who is the repository of relationship. So most speech went there, even speech was originated so to speak, by man.
In any case, we're dealing with a creature who's both masculine and feminine together, so, I'm not sure who was the originator here—which side of man spoke. Some opinions have hiom as being androgynous. But the point is that lanaguage is born in the outward turning possibility of an other with whom I will live. And to whom I will connect.
So now what has occurred is that man has become available to the possibility of relationship by himself being aroused to the need for it and therefore becoming vulnerable—will I have it, won't I have it? None of these are right for him, and by becoming desirous of it. Without that, it doesn't work. Sexual drive is simply a –beside all of the good things about it and that comes with it, but one of the really powerful aspects of it, is that it forces people who are to become a couple, to overcome all of the restraints, fears, and disconnection that, were it not there, they would prefer to just deal with, rather than have to go into relationship. It's a very scary thing to go into relationship. There's a drive here which pushes people over the brink. So to speak when push comes to shove. What we want to do with that is a fascinating subject, but it doesn't necessarily have to be here.
The point is that this is actually a teaching about this story which the Ramban tells us, when he attempts to explain what G-d had in mind when he brought all of these animals in front of him. And so he says the following, that why did He do it? Why did He bring all of these animals? So he says the following: Ramban on verse twenty: Nachon b'einai, it seems to me, ki lo yaachefetz lefanav yitbarach lakachat tzalo mimeno, G-d didn't want to take the side of this man from him, ad she yeidah ha adam, she ein ba nivrah im ezer lo. Until he would know that there is no other creature that is ezer for him. V' she yitaveh she y'hyeh lo ezer cmotah. That he should have desire, that he should have a help-mate like here. Lifnei zeh, tzarich lakachat mimeno [achak] mitzarotav. That's why He takes from him one of his sides. And this is the meaning of His passing the animals in front of him, that man should become aware of his need.
This is very important because we see it exactly parallel as the way G-d related to us. The first thing He does is He speaks words to us that put Him into a situation so to speak of His needing us to respond to his call. Any man or any woman who does not experience that shift into a realization of I'm not whole without that other, will never really be able to experience a loving and connecting relationship. Somehow there needs to be a vaccum, a chalal, an empty space created that will be filled by an other. Now we will see this as a complex connection here. But right now the simple point is crucial, in the way man is created and in the way G-d parades in front of him the animals. So, it's not until it's happened that he's become aware of that drive and need, that G-d will then be able to do what He does to take his other half—according to one of the interpretations, and stand her in front of him so that she will become the one with whom he will have the following experience and this is described in verse twenty-three, when man says, Zot hapa'am—this is the time. This is the one. Meaning, there have been other tries, in some sense, there were other considerations, other possibilities. Etzem m'atzami, basar mbasari, this is my very selfhood, my very flesh. Vzot yikarei isha ki me ish lukacha zot. So this will be called woman because she has been taken from man. Al ken yazo ish et aviv v'imo so that's why a person leaves his father and mother. V'davak b'ishto and has deveikut with his wife. [??] basar echad. Then they become one flesh.
So that transition begins even with man's first statement of Zot hapa'am, this is the time, indicating that there have been other possibilities which have not been ones that he is an appropriate match for, an appropriate meeting for. And only that, the Chumash tells us, only because of that will a person leave his father and mother. In other words, he has to have an experience of something outside there, outside the realm of the family, and things that he's used to and comfortable with. For him to step out and to enter the possibility of him to be davel b'ishto [??] basar echad.
And yet, the Rabbis tell us a rather curious thing. They tell us that in the beginning, G-d actually considered making man as two separate creatures, that there would be woman and there would be man. That was the original plan. That He would make man, and that there would be woman alongside him. Not as one body but as two separate entities. And then He decided that He would make them first as one. So what happens in that process, in that initial consideration that there first would be two, and then G-d's decision that there would b one. It's rather odd, it's like why is He first considering that? That they should be two, and then they should be one? And then creates them as one. Somehow there has to be that there would be a plan, a thought, that creates a certain reality. Of two separate entities, and then the means to get to that has to be that they will first made as one. Get this. In our teachings, the first thought is the purpose. Like, when we say, when we talk about Shabbat, first in thought, last in deed. So first in thought, the first thought is that there would be two. Only then G-d does sort of a menas to getting to that point, which is that there would be a creation of one. But the creation of one is the means of getting to the point of there being two. Kind of funny, you'd think it would be the opposite, that first He thinks of them as one, but then He creates them as two. But instead, He thinks of them as two, and then He creates them as one.
So, you're saying that the whole chapter one of Bereshit is, let's make man in our image and G-d created them in His image, male and female He created them, but that's all just in thought?
That's what the Rabbi's say. That's actually how it's taught. Male and femal, that's in his mind. But then in actuality, he created them as one body. You're right, it would be good to give you perhaps more text on this, what the Rabbis say, and show you these verses. But initially, what He's thinking is that they'll be two, and then He creates them as one. This is very important. It's not a difficult point, it's just one to be aware of. And you can see an experience of union which can only be had by virtue of you having once been one. The point is that two separate entities experience union, so the point is that two separate entities experience being outside one another knegdo, one against the other, one opposite the other, two separate free-standing individuals. That's the point, that there be two separate, free-standing individuals. That's the first thought who have the power of coming to experience oneness and union. So physically, they first need to be created as one. In order that, what will happen in this world that will be when they become separated, then they will be able to stand freely in desire of each other, experiencing the need of completion by virtue of their being in relationship.
It's not complicated, but it's crucial to realize that G-d is setting up an ezer knegdo reality in which—and now I'm going to expose a bit of which that term means—in which there will be an ezer, a support, one who is able to be at one with, and knegdo, one who is able to stand opposite from and in opposition to. Neged means in opposition to. In other words, in order for there to be the possibility for relationship, there needs to be the ability and possibility of union, of at-oneness, of support, and knegdo, standing opposite of and saying no. And those both need to be experienced at once. In other words, there needs to be a sense of me being at union with this other, that my wholeness is a result of our coming together, but I can only experience that if that other is able to stand in opposition to me and across from me, saying No. That’s a blunt way to say it. In an existing and separated selfhood. Right-relationship will only be able to exist if both of those realities are present. Both the realities of ezer, and the reality of knegdo.
It's unfortunate translations that miss how the Hebrew is actually describing what appear to be two opposite movements of ezer and of knegdo. Some people say "help-meet" and there are in the mefarshim, Rashi actually has something which, the Maharal says is the konic, it's a little bit of humor, that yeah, if you're ezer, you're zocheh, if you're not, she's going to be against you. But the Maharal says that Rashi's not meaning, that the verse is telling you that I'll make him an ezer knegdo. Someone that if he's zocheh, so she should be with him, and if he's not, she'll be aginst him, it's going to be hell. That's the point. The point is, that both of those need to be present in order for the possibility of relationship to be there.
So G-d, in His first thought thinks the ultimate intention, which is that there should be fusion and deveikut. Excuse me, two separate entities who can stand on their own, who will be freely choosing and able to come into relationship, but only able to come into relationship because they have the possibility of disconnecting from it. If that possibility is not there, then the relationship is not real. No such thing as Catholic marriage by us. The relationship has to be embedded in the possibility of me walking away, demanding separation. And that is, in spiritual language, what is called the ratzo v'shov, of going out and coming back. Of going out towards the union and the meeting, and the coming back to my separated and individuated selfhood.
It's very important that a couple learn that very delicate dance of ratzo v'shov. It's embedded in what the nature of relationship is as ezer knegdo, individuated and separate. The physical experience is of them being created as one. Because that's how this worlds experiences union, so then G-d creates them as one, so that possibility of ezer will be there, of fusion and togetherness and oneness of deep, deep, deep intimacy. But the point is that they be able to stand across from each other in separation and individuation and each have their own separate, individuated self in order to come into that fusion. So in this world they're created as one, but in G-d's mind, they are initially two.
In this world they're created as one?
Yeah, they're created as one body.
Wow.
But there's another [stage] of separation.
That's right.
That's why [?] back, because we know there's separation. (44:05)
We know it as separation, meaning that there is another stage of separation here, in this world, where G-d separates them into two.
In that case, it's so painful to be—they say that in this world you're created as one body, but if you're not whole, it's so painful. Are we not supposed to feel whole in ourselves as we come together with another? Are we not supposed to have that, maybe it's just the western idea I have that you're totally balanced in yourself and you come together with someone who's balanced within him or herself and then that's where a healthy relationship comes from.
I wouldn't belittle that. The ability to stand knegdo in differentiation and individuation is crucial for a relationship of connection to be lived rightly. But these are subtle and compound experiences. It's not like, I don't need her, I don't need him. And we'll learn about that more when we learn about a midah that's called histapkut. But for now, I just want to point out that this is embedded already in the verse that will become a root description for us of the nature of how a loving relationship comes about. It has to be able to be lived both the ezer and the knegdo. And only then can there be the possibility of davak b'ishto l'basar echad be present. Now that, as we said, is built on, well, now we have two principals. One principal is the willingness to open to vulnerability, the awareness of my need, and the other is my ability to find what is good as a connecting point. So that I will be able to be here in this situation or with this person.
What does it mean when we say Vdavak bishto vheilo l'basar echad? So here also I want to give you a reading from the Ramban, where he says the following. There are two interpretations of what the Vdavak bishto vheilo l'basar echad, is. He leaves his parents, he walks out on a situation of being comfortable. Then he clings to his wife, or communes with his wife, and then they become one flesh. So what is the meaning of their becoming one flesh? So Rashi says that they become basar echad, Havlad basar al yadei shneihem. Vsham naaseh bsaram echad. The child that's born of the two of them. Ah, that's when their flesh becomes one, because now they have been formed into one person, the tow of them in that child, simple enough. The problem with it, of course, is that it does not teach anything unique about man. Man isn't the only creation that becomes one flesh, animals do that too! So, I guess what you're telling me, is that all animals also will become one flesh, by virtue of their coupling? So then, what is unique about man here? Well, what is unique about man, the Ramban teaches, is vdavak b'ishto, that he clings to his wife. And she also to him, that they commune together. And in that communing they become one.
And so then Ramban says, I don't understand the Rashi. What do you mean that they become one by virtue of the child. Because animals do that too. No, but rather, with animals, there is no deveikut. You know, the male and the female come together, they have the function of reproduction, then they go off their separate ways. Not all of them. In fact, the yonah, is actually a significant symbol for us. But in general that's the way it is in the animal kingdom. Mipneh zeh amar hakatuv, that's why the verse tells us that here it's different, because she is like his very self. And of his very flesh. And therefore, he communes with her. He clings to her. She becomes to him like his very own flesh. She to him, him to her, becomes her very own flesh, and his language is only from the male perspective, but it can be read either way: v'yakptz bah, v'yotah tamid imo, he's in full desire that she should always be with him, like it was with the first man, so it was placed as the nature of all of his progeny, that all of the males and the females are deveikim, they leave their parents and they see each other as far more their own flesh than any relative they're ever had.
So this kind of achievement of an experience of oneness with the other, is something with is unique to human life, where as for all animals, sex is a function of reproduction. For man, the way the Ramban teaches this verse, sex is not a function for the accomplishment of reproduction, but at a certain level, reproduction is itself a drive pushed two separate people to come together, the purpose being, that they should become one flesh. I'll say that again. In the animal kingdom, the sexual drive is embedded so that there should be reproduction, so once that's accomplished, they're done. But in human life, in a sense, sometimes it's even the opposite, the sexual function produces a child and creates a union between the parents that wasn't there before. And that's right. We're in this common creation. We have indeed become one by virtue of this common creation. It's quite extraordinary, it really is, that a joint creative activity, will produce a union between those who do it. I mean, we all know this. Whenever you want to create a great group dynamic. You want to get people together. So give tehm a project to work on together. Then you'll see a group united. Give them a project. The more creative it is, the more it involves a union of minds and body, the more you can get involved in that joint creativity, so the more the group becomes united and one. The creativity becomes the means by which the group comes together, That's when it's called being manipulative so that you can get a so to speak group cohesive. Group cohesiveness. But the truth is, the chumash is actually saying that. They will leave their parents not in order to have children. They leave their parents because they seek their own wholeness. Because they're aware of their being partial. And then in their coming together, it's the most beautiful thing that G-d has made the world this way in joining together, that they not only produce the progeny, but then that progeny serves to bring them into even closer and more powerful union. Both physically and emotionally, and ultimately spiritually, as being jointly devoted, as we'll see in the third level. That's an entirely different reading of the verse. Al ken ya'azov ish et aviv vet imo, He leaves his parents, v'davak b'ishto l'basar echad. He sacrifices a false experience of union which is in his family, or a level of an experience which is he is still missing his other half, and steps out in order to cleave to an other. That only comes about by virtue of this experience of the lack of other possibilities and alternative, which then also creates the experience of a knegdo, because she can say no, she is other than him, and he is in need of her, and he is vulnerable and open and to this. Which allows for—and now I'm going to use a term that we used at the end of our coming into the Land of Israel after the desert, he acquires a lev la'da'at, a knowing heart, one that can appreciate and accept it and not block it out of a need to remain separate and independent and self-sufficient and thereby, like we saw between man and G-d, l'hakir b'chasdei hashem, to recognize His goodness, l'davek bo, and become in communion with him, so also now, his next stage will be to recognize the goodness for this other to connect and then to become a entity of oneness in all the different realms in which we live.
I had this realization. I was sitting in Tel Aviv, looking at the way people dress and walk, seeing the way women dress, and what they show and don't show, all the different games that are going on, all the different attempts to attract people, it's like it's—it's almost like there's like an embedded knowing that it's going to be really hard to overcome the walls that stand between us as separate individuals. And that they need to do something that's going to really pull this other person in. And indeed, it's very challenging. And we're going to see as we look deeper, what the nature of this orlah is. What the nature of this block that stands between us and another is. Why it is that we're so reluctant to expose ourselves to one another in a deep sense of intimacy. And have to rely on all kinds of physical drives that pull us together. Which is also embedded in the nature of reality. G-d knows our foibles, so to speak. But the point is, all of that reluctance to become exposed, has to do with, if I can come back to the point of today's class, has to do with first and foremost, with my willingness to accept my vulnerability. That indeed I am not whole with out you. That indeed there is something that my life is lacking if you are not here. Without that availability to that, with all that that implies, there will never be an intimate relationship, because there is a withholding that accompanies the interaction. And, more deeply, the maintenance of that vulnerability has to do with the ability of each member of the couple to stand as a knegdo with the possibility of separating, with the reality of being separate and differentiation, and so to speak, whole on your own. That's ezer knegdo.
There's a very subtle interaction between these elements and that's why—and I'll translate the phrase as one thing, but it really means the ability to hold both. And indeed the way G-d created us and the way he made that first experience of man is what we all go through. [1] An awareness that I have to separate out from my family and to become my own. It is an awareness of this aloneness that is something not go, and usually there is a whole parade of animals, so to speak, until you discover the one who's truly meant to be yours. I don't mean to be disparaging. But oftentimes, that's the way it's experienced. But what that does is it develops the possibility of language. The possibility of being able to enunciate the connecting points of communication that will allow for the possibility of deveikut, of connection that comes with years of living together and being together. All of this is parallel as we have begun to see in the way in which we live with G-d.
I'm curious how it is dealt with the difference of chapter one and chapter two of creation, in short? Your point about the first story being in thought.
I wish I was better prepared to share that with you. But indeed Chazal say that that verse, which is back in chapter one, where man was created, we're talking about chapter one, verse twenty-seven, which says, vayivrah elohim et ha adam b'tzalmo, b'tzelem elohim barah oto. Zachar u'nekevah barah otam, so the verse itself is so to speak confused. At first, in the singular, it says that G-d created him. And then it says that make and female, He created them. So which is it, did He create him, or did he create them? So that's where the Rabbis derive that actually both happened. Namely, that His creation is in practice here, barah oto. But zachar un'kevah, barah otam, is the way it was in His mind. But b'li neder, I'll look at the source of that so that you could see that better . (Editor's note: check if this teaching appears in the sequels to this lesson: Be'erot 03b and Be'erot 03c). The first story and the second story.
You are getting it confused with nifrad, lo nifrad, it feels like we don’t' know what really comes first. In thought, then in creation, it's like the chicken or the egg, that's why it's so confusing.
It's hard to find the beginning of. It's like circle[2] which both are happening, that we're one together and we're separate; we're one together, we’re separate. What sense is there in it being two separate acts? We're really living both of those at once. We'll contemplate that more.
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Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Episode Transcript:
We saw the beginning of Hakadosh Baruch Hu’s relationship with man, and it was very important to us to take a look at how that begins because we’re really looking in this series at the most primary points of contact between us and Hakadosh Baruch Hu and they are rooted in the way man is created and in the first interactions between us and Gd. The reason that’s important to us is because we’re sort of promoting or claiming a certain position and that is that primary relationship that Hakadosh Baruch Hu seeks between us and him as a relationship of love and that in His expressing His love towards us so then we become carriers of that love into the world by the way in which we express it and manifest it towards others and towards the planet. So we become the vessels of His expression of that love which He himself has for his creation and which He desires for His creation to reflect back to Him. And this for me is a very exciting re-orientation of Judasim, to be honest, for those of us who are used to the laws, the mitzvos, as being primary—well, that’s certainly the case, that they are the primary vehicle for that relationship. But unfortunately we often lose the core of that, and that’s what I hope to rekindle and re-establish in these teachings. The way we are going about it is by looking at these primary points and getting clarity on not only what those primary points are, and what are the factors of our own being in the world, what our perspective and experiences that will bring about what it is that Hakadosh Baruch Hu is seeking that we should know that love of Him, know His love for us and spread that through the means which he has provided us.
There is no secret that there is a spin-off from Judaism which is called Christianity, which actually took this very prime point and distorted it by…Well, you know I was just walking through the Old City the other day and I was listening to a monk give a tour to Christians who had come over and all he could talk about was the “spirit of the Law, the spirit of the Law, they had lost the spirit of the Law”, that Paul had come to re-establish the spirit of the Law, etc. I thought this was very interesting because there is a possibility, not just a possibility but a lived reality of the both spirit of the Law and the actual fulfillment of it. It’s actually a perversion to disembody the Law like it’s a perversion to disembody a human being, and I suppose that that monk’s life is a reflection of that on a certain level—celibacy is not part of our parlance because of that commitment to the embodiment of all this in a lived way.
So, leaving polemics aside, (sigh) it’s getting easier and easier to talk about these things, but there’s still vast regions of yiddishkeit that don’t really orient themselves this way. In any case, I want us to be as solid as we can be in terms of our exploration in establishing these points, B’ezrat Hashem.
So what we looked at last time was the first creation, and I want to take a look back at that just to remind us of a certain, not only query that Rashi makes into the pasuk, but a paradigm which he establishes about the way we are with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. So if you remember, we were in the second chapter of Bereshis, and there we have in verse four: That these are the unfoldings of heavens and earth….. And then we have the description there, there is no siach ba sadeh, there is no esev ba sadeh, because there is no man there to work the ground and we saw that from that verse it seems quite clear that man has to come to the planet in order that things should grow. He’s going to be created now in order to solve a problem, in order to make a tikkun, on order to allow for things to be blossoming. And that inversion of perspective was important to us, as we’re used to the planet serving us as being the way we look at things but here we have man here serving the planet. But as we became more deeply cognizant of what’s happening here, we really that that kind of dichotomous thinking is really the product of a wrong attitude, and that is that somehow we are not of the planet. As if in serving the planet we’re not also being served by the planet. And when the planet serves us, it’s as if we’re not serving it. That comes from a perspective that has us as if we are not part of the planet. (Laughing) That’s a product of a certain kind of an attitude and thinking which divorces our consciousness from the very being of the existence which Gd has made. And although we are of different stuff when it comes to our soul, and also to a certain extent when it comes to our mind, nevertheless we are very much a part of the created reality. And so, in the course of our learning together we realize in fact that it’s wrong to look at that kind of a split that way, as if it’s one or the other. And as we’re going to learn a little bit more today, what actually transpires in us is transpiring in the planet. But we’ll come back to that.
So what we saw was, that man should be created, such that there should be rain, such that things should grow, and if you remember we pointed out that that won’t happen unless his knowing of the need of the planet is intimate.[1] And the way his knowing of the need of the planet is intimate, is both by him being created of the planet—in other words, you’re just dirt of the ground with the water added so that Gd should knead you together into what you are. That means that you are taken from the earth. So, it couldn’t be more intimate to know what the earth needs, then by your having been taken from it. That was one aspect. And the other aspect is that Gd sets it up that for us to know that the world needs rain comes about by virtue of our working the ground. And that was how the verse worked, remember? That we are told there is no rain, and there is no man to work the ground. If you’re looking for man to pray for rain so that it should rain, so then make man and he’ll pray for rain. Why do you have to have him working the ground? Unless, as we said last time, that there’s knowing, and there’s knowing. There’s knowing that there needs to be rain, which is where the intellect looks at things from the outside, analyzes them and then reports what the earth needs, and then there’s being thirsty…and sweating…and hoeing…and plowing…and waiting for the rain.
Content-wise there’s no difference. Both people know that there needs to be rain. Connectedness-wise, it’s an entirely different consciousness. So the verse is very careful to say Gd has not made it rain yet for there is no man to work the ground, not because there’s no man to pray for it. And this is crucial, crucial, crucial as we’ll see as we progress because that means that prayer, awareness, knowing, are really not so important to us as some kind of external observation. But only when they become en eternal experience and connectedness do they really have the import that Hakadosh Baruch Hu intended for them to have. I can’t stress this enough because so much of what’s been lost to us in terms of Hakadosh Baruch Hu is a product of quite a few processes but certainly one of them is the rise of scientific thinking, which gets the idea that knowing the greatness of Gd’s creation, that means science and cold analysis and picking apart so that you see how it works, and then you’ll appreciate HIS,, is doesn’t work that way. I’m not saying it isn’t a valuable enterprise, I’m not in any way anti-scientific on the level of that project being a significant project. But when that project becomes the singular project and the connectivity to what is is lost, that’s when you lose the intensity of connection that is meant for us, And if it’s not going to be from working the ground, which for most of us it isn’t, then it’s going to have to come from some other way that we have a shift in consciousness so that that kind of intimacy is recovered.
Then we began to look deeply into how the chachamim analyze this verse. And they tell us what is meant to happen. What will be, Rashi tells us, is that there will be created a man who will be…I’m reading at the end of the Rashi in verse 5 where Rashi gives us three statements about what man is going to be. Well, actually four. There needs to be a man to work the ground, to recognize the goodness of rain, (keeping the distinctions of the Hebrew) and then pray for them. There are four stages here. One is a real and direct involvment in what is, he’s working the ground. Two, is he recognizes the goodness the rain, that’s the starting point. Three, he sees the need, and four, he prays, connect to Gd, has intimacy with Gd. So, be involved, connect and be involved, it matters, there’s caring by being involved. It’s a principle in avodah so that it’s intimate and real, there’s recognizing the good (and seeking it) there’s coming to know the need, and there’s asking, turning to the source. All these in order to have rain, and to put it a different way, all these because there is no rain. By there being no rain, all this can happen. Apparnetly had there been rain, there would be missing intimate involvment, an appreciate awareness, a compassionate stance, and a connection to source. In other words, these four elements are why there’s no rain, so they should be elicited is one way to look at it. The simpler way to look at it is because there is no rain all these processes have to happen, but I think that Rashi gives it away that we’re not just talking about rain when he says, “veyn makir btovatam shel geshamim. I think that’s the giveaway in the Rashi, that if there’s no man working the ground, then there won’t be someone to recgnize the goodness. That is to say, we’re not just talking about someone coming here to pray, we’re talking about someone who can recognize the goodness, that’s what we’re after. If what we’re after is getting the rain to fall down, then you wouldn’t have to make a world in which people had to pray in order to get it, I mean you want things to grow, Gd, You created it, it’s what it’s for, I mean why did you create a world where people had to recognize the goodness and go through all of this. Clearly, it begs the question “man for world or world for man”—it becomes a silly point. It’s all one entitity, one organic reality in which there is a conscious element, which is the one God is waiting for a coming to a recognition of the good in order for the whole planet to function. When that happens, then creation is fulfills. I want to tell you, it’s not only that when that happens, then creation is fulfilled’ we need to get deeper into what this means but we actually have a something of a repeat of this in the parsha which describes the Jewish people coming inot the land of Israel and what this needs to be. I’m talking about Parshat Ki Tavo nmuch later in Devarim, where we have a repeat of a similar phenomenon where we’re waiting for man to be “makir…tov” Take a look there in Parshat Ki Tavo. In chapter 26, and then at the end of Ki Tavo, put your finger in chapter 29….
Let me summarize up until now this thing Rashi has taught us. There needs to be intimate connection or involvment, awareness, but it’s an awareness of tov, compassion, like a compassionate knowing, the world need him—that ‘s the compassion, and it’s da’at, and then finally a connection to source. Becoming a channel or arousing the source of the water to give it. As most things with four, it parallels the structure of the divine name, with the lower heh being the intimate connection in reality, the vav being da’at, being makir be tov, as we’ll see later, and then knowing that the world needs him, something needs to be brought out, and finally connection to Source, the upper yud. That’s for the advanced students (laughing).
What I want to show you, just like at the beginning, so to speak, at the end. By the end, I mean when we finally get to the land of Israel, leave this, complete the process of redemption which has taken us through the desert, we get to Israel: “Vhayah ki tove, when you get to the land…which got has given you as a nachalah, and then you’re going to take from the first fruits of the land to bring them to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and then you’re going to to the Cohen who’s there certain things about where you’ve come from and what has been up until now. And Rashi say, “Why are you doing this? Why do you have to make the declaration to HaKadosh Baruch Hu: Why isn’t it enough just to bring the fruits? If this is like another korban, if this is like another sacrifice, so just bring it, to the cohen, like you bring him trumah, like you bring to the Levi ma’aser, like you bring when you have to bring a sacrifice, you bring it to the Cohen and then you’re done—you don’t have this whole verbiage of declaring, boy it’s been a long trek. So why do you have to say it? So Rashi says that the reason why you have to say it is to declare (end of verse three) you are not someone who is the opposite who is opposite of makir b’tov. A cafui be’tovah is someone who is covering over the good. In the Mishnah, lichpot et hacli is covering a vessel. Nowadays, cafui ley har caguiguit at Har Sinai. Most people think that He forced them, using the guiguit. But really in the language of chazal, he covered them over with a guiguit, a pail. C’fiyah datit, nowadays, is a usage of force which originates in covering over.
In any case, you come and the reason you have to declare to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, it’s been a long trek, it was fantastic, we’ve made it back, is in order to declare that you are not a cafui tovah. It’s basic…Because it’s basic, it’s profound, but it’s really very simple (laughing). And that is the declaration: I recognize the goodness. I’m not a cafui tovah. And there’s a reason why he sayd I’m not a cafui, and we’ll get into that deeper, we’ll come to that more. What I just want you to see is that you get to Israel, that’s what you declare. It’s something like a re-entry into the God (whoops) Gan Eden where the condition for coming in has to do with … b’ tov.
Now look how it ends, parshat Ki Tavo in Chapter 29. Moshe Rabbeinu says very explicitly, why we had to wait forty years to get back. And that declaration of why it took us forty years to get back is the same declaration of why we had to wait so many years to get back and are still waiting to get back. Because look at the beginning of chapter 29, “and Moshe called to all of Yisrael and he said to them You are the ones who saw everything that Gd did in front of your eyes in Egypt. You’ve seen all the great wonders, the miracles, etc. And you know what, Gd didn’t give you a heart to know, and eyes to know and ears to hear until today. That’s why I took you forty years in the desert so that your clothes wouldn’t wear out, and you didn’t have to eat bread, and you didn’t have to drink wine, in order that you should come to da’at that I am your Gd. “ So I look at these verses and I ask, What is it that took so long? Well, I didn’t have eyes to see and ears to hear. But you just told me that they had eyes to see the great wonders and miracles—they saw them! Didn’t they see them?! Nah. They didn’t see them. Why? Because really seeing requires a lev lada’at, a knowing heart. Now, what is this knowing heart? What does it mean to have a knowing heart such that now you have eyes to see and ears to hear, Such that Gd says I took you through the desert so that you should come to da’at. Without da’at you can’t come in. Without da’at, you can’t be here. So, again Rashi tells us something so deep and crucial. In verse three there, Rashi tells us what lev lada’at is. Lehakir….bo. To recognize Gd’s goodness and to have devaykut with him. Language of communion and clinging. It’s amazing. So Rashi tells us what lev lada’’at and it’s what we need to wait forty years in the desert to get. It’s what all galut is waiting for us to achieve. And that is how to… (not clear) achieve da’at? Which allows ledavek bo. I have a guide. A guide, we’ve seen that man has been created to be l’hakir tov be geshamim, same thing as when we come into Israel to be makir b’tov, makir b’chasdei Hashem, l’davek bo… Where did Rashi get the lhidavek bo from ? Did the verse say lehidavek bo, to cling to Him? The verse said, it’s about knowing, right? Unless we’re talking about a knowing which is a clinging, unifying, communing knowing and it’s clearly what Rashi means, because otherwise he has no source for saying lehidavek bo, that wasn’t there. Lehakir bo, I can get from the verse, but lehidabek bo? Ah, that’s the lev ha’da’at. It has to do with knowing the goodness. And I want to tell you something. It’s not always so simple to know the goodness. And the reason why it’s not so simple to know the goodness is because human beings have a pension for insisting that they are self-made. By which I mean, it’s very difficult to accept from another in which that acceptance implies that that other is participating in making me. Most of us prefer to think of ourselves as being self-made by which I mean, I’m my own person. It’s a very profound opening and maturing to recognize that in my selfhood I am interpenetrating and interpenetrated by the reality that I’m a participant and part of. There is no, so to speak, independently self-made me. And so we have a tendency to try to cover over and step aside from and avoid the goodnesses which we were given. And I believe it takes a particular midah, trait to develop which I want to talk about and I believe we’re going to see(k) profound things in a particular personality, maybe that of Avraham, that’s able to accept goodness, but the “I am a rock, I am an island” kind of a mentality, which is a kind of in physics, it’s sort of a Newtonian vitality?, actually before Newton, that the construction of reality is these myriad impenetrable atoms that everything is made of, these, like, particles. I think it was Lucretious who invented the paradigm. So it was like a particle-ized reality, which is really coming to an end in physics, where it’s not a particle-ized reality. It’s like a stream of energy that takes different dancing formations. That has vast implications. Also in terms of how we relate to one another and our connection and our participation in all that is. I really feel like it’s the movement toward a lev l’da’at, as the paradigm for all that is shifting. I mean, on one level there’s me and you, and we’re separate and apart. But there’s another level in which that’s not an accurate depiction of how that all works. We’re all interconnected all of the times and participating in the making of each other. In higher or lesser frequencies or intensities. In other words, a shift from an individuated and particle-ized sense of reality to one of a mutual sharing is what a lev l’da’at is all about. And that , if we put that back into a sort of avodah, it comes down to l’hakr be tovatam. To be makir the tov. In Hebrew, it means on one level or another, to appreciate. But it’s better translated into recognizing the good, always connecting. I’ll put it to you this way. If you’re always analyzing, like in a scientific way, so you won’t connect to it, but if you appreciat it and recognize how good it is, then you become connected to it. In Kabbalistic language, tov is the midah of yesod. Yesod is the connecting point. This is why when we’re told by HaKadosh Baruch Hu his evaluation of Creation, --I’m going to return now to something more simple and direct-- so we’re told that Gd looks at everything and He says that it’s good. The first thing that Gd does is that He is makir b’tov. He’s connecting to it, we’d say today. That’s what we do, if we appreciate it, we connect to it. If you’re just analyzing it, you’re not connecting to it. If you criticize it, then you are relating to it, but you’re not connecting to it. But, oh, that’s good. Somehow that means that this is a reality that is serving existence. My existence, the formation of that which is meant to be and exist. That’s why I connect to it because I’m participating in that manifestation of reality, it’s good, it’s good. Just a simple thing. If you’re looking at this cup and you’re thinking bad things about it, you’re going to disconnect. If you’re looking at this cup and you appreciate it…
If you’re looking at this notebook and you say (makes a nasal voice) “It’s too small, I don’t like that color, too many pages—disconnect. But if you appreciate it, you know, what a good feel it’s got, they really designed it right so that it will fit into the pocket, etc. so being makir b’tov is another language for connecting to. From experience, that’s the way it is. Very simply the Chumash says a very beautiful thing. Does everyone see how beautiful this is, it began with the creation of man, with Gd making a creature who is makir b’tov. We can’t get back to the bechinah of Gan Eden, which is Eretz Yisrael, we can’t get out of the desert, the disconnect until we learn the bechinah of makir b’tov. You can see the all the miracles in the world, Gd says, and you have seen them all, but you haven’t had a lev l’da’at until now.
(Responding to student question) That’s true. That needs work and understanding. (Looking for a Gemara) But I think what Chaya’s pointing out is, what is the nature of our participation in making a lev lada’at? If it seems that it is divinely conducting, whether we get it or not. Let’s leave that ze tzarich iyun. I’m not sure what to say about it, I think she’s right…
(Student comments)
What we saw there is that coming into the land of Israel requires of us having hakarat hatov l’hidabek bo. And here the fullness of the picture was all about communion. Gd has done these miracles, these beautiful things. As long as you’re not communing with Him by virtue of them, then the purpose has not been served. So it’s not positive thinking, and it’s nice to be appreciative, those are all good midot. They are not particiapant in the redemptive process until those midot because participant with the ultimate purpose of communing with Gd. But that can come on levels of communing which are going to happen and they can come by virtue of communing right in this world with other human beings. Do you understand? If this were a mussar shmooze I’d be talking to uou about appreciating. But as a spiritual teaching, which is rooted in what it is that man’s purpose is, we are being informed by Rashi that it’s about lhakir et chasdei Hashem lhidabek bo. And I believe that from the very beginning of what that’s for. So, you can actually see this in the way that the Chumash uses the word, in the pasuk that you are all familiar with, I’m sure. And that is where Hakadosh Baruch Hu has looked at all the things in Creation, and then finally he looks at the fact that man is alone and he says, “It is not good for man to be alone.” It’s a very deep description. Because it means that everything in Creation has been good. It means that everything in Creation has been participant in this connective reality, except for one, and that is man’s being alone. That is “lo tov” but what I want us to un is that lo tov, it’s not thwat it’s a bad thing in a moral sense. It is the embodiment of lo tov. The emb of lo tov is being alone. It’s not that it’s not good to be alone. Right? Which is also true, I mean, what do you mean like that? I don’t like it, it isn’t pleasant. Or, not good, in an ethical sense. Like you have a job to do. It involves getting married and having kids, what is going on with you? Get going. We all heard enough of that. But what I’m saying is, just like Gd looks at all things and says they are good that’s what’s called in philosophy an ontological statement, it’s a description of the reality so also this is a description of reality, meaning that there is by definition lo tov in being alone. That’s what it means. Tov means being together. Lo tov means being alone. And the amazing thing is that Rashi again one of the advantages of learning with me is that I’m always very simple. Chumash, Rashi, it’s enough for me but that’s also the disadvantage. Because it’s so simple, it’s hard to get a grasp on it. But I hope you’re with me on this. I was you to see the Rashi. Rashi says something so pertinent, Rashi says on that verse: What does that mean “lo tov…l’vado”? People are going to come to say, they shouldn’t say….One way to read that is it’s not good because it’s going to produce a mistake to think that he’s Gd. You know, there’s a Gd up there and there’s a Gd down there. But the deeper teachng that Rashi’s giving us is that lo tov means that the reality will be particlized into two reshuyot.Two domains. There’s not two domains, there’s only one domain. It’s all one field. It’s all one interconnected reality. That they would come to see reality as particle-ized. They wouldn’t see reality as an interconnecting field. (Answering student) That is so deep and so crucial for us to realize that it’s in creation of another that we do away with the mistaken consciousness of two reshuiyot as long as I’m standing alone, I might think that all is separate. But it’s when I’m standing together with that I know that all is One. That’s the way our consiousness has been designed. You have no concept of oneness in standing alone. You can only achieve a consciousness of oneness, of one domain, when you’re standing with another. And it’s all a matter of makir b’tov but that word has come to mean far more than we had originally given it weight for meaning. So now when we come back and swe see the other element in Rashi here, is that it’s Gd’s interest that there not be that consciousness of dichotomoy of shty reshuyot Like nowadays to say, like it’s not that you’re single, it’s not good for you. No, this is the Creation, this is what the Creation is about. This is what Gd is seeking, is that there should be a conscious (?) self, one reshutand the way He is bringing this about is that there should be creating down here a relationship between man and woman which will now create a consciousness of one reshut and both express His desire for unity and realize it. This is big stuff here. This is so Jewish! I have no idea, what do the goyim do, what do Christians do with this pasuk, that believe in celibacy. What do you do with a verse like this that makes it so crucial for creation. So, what we saw last time, and we’re going to B”H see how this parallels human life and, so to speak, in our relation with the divine…
We already began to see one beginning element which is really deep, and now we can much more appreciate how crucial to this process of tov, and that is the first thing that Gd does with man is that He gives him a choice. And what I’m reminding you of is, that the first time Gd speaks to man, according to Rashi, is where it says, “Vayikach (2:15) And Gd took man and placed him in Gd Eden, and then He commanded him. So again it looks like He took, He took him and then put him down. He spoke to him attractive things and tempted himl orseduced him into the Garden of Eden. This is amazing on two crucial account. Namesly one, that man is beign given a choice. There is no picking him up, taking him and putting him down into the Garden of Eden. You will not be in the Garden of Eden unless your heart is there. He has drawn him there. Rashi is so deep because you can’t be in the Graden of Eden any other way. Imagine being in the Garden of Eden by force? That’s hell! But more deeply, the first interaction between Gd and man is when man’s ability to say no is respected. One side of that is of course, he’s being given his independence of entity, which is of course crucial for a loving relationship. Rape is not a loving relationship. OK, that’s an obvious point, but that deserves investigation. The other point which is more relevant to us and where I want to follow things is that Gd himself ahs made himselfe vulnerable in giving man a choice. We ended with my granddaughter saying no, I’m not going to give Saba a hug. And I end up hanging there like a jerk. Well, it’s not quite that bad, but it feels pretty stupid. Here I am fifty years her senior, and she’s saying no to me, that’s it, I’m done, but that’s what happening to HaKadosh Baruch Hu, if man had said no, done! HaKadosh Baruch Hu has made himself vulnerable. But it’s in that vulnerability that availability happens. And it’s in availability happening that connection can become, and there can be tov. I’m not going to be open to the possibility of a no and the yes will really have no substance, significance, connection. And that’s clearly part of the lev la da’at. And that is indeed the other meaning of eni cafu letovah, and that’s why Rashi said in Ki Tavo, he didn’t say “ani makir b’to” when he brings the fruits, but rather eni cafui tovah, I don’t experience this tov as being something that’s been imposed upon me, cafui in sense of imposition. In other words, I’m not one who covers it over, but I’m also not one who is covered over by it. Because cafui tov means to be covered over, not I’m not cofei hatov, it didn’t say, that I covered the tov, but rather I’m not cafui tov, that I’m not covered by it, meaning I’m not being forced by it, that’s what you have to say when you come into the Land of Israel, I am willingly and openly accepting this. I don’t experience it as being imposed upon me as if it is an antagonism to my project of self-made person. I recognize that I am ready to join you in a joint and mutual project of creation of my selfhood, and I see you Gd, you’re not forcing this upon me. I have a lev la’dat to know that it is given to me from your own, so to speak vulnerability of having given me the chance to say no.
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Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.
Synopsis: Establishing G-d and man's relationship in Gan Eden.
Episode Transcript:
What I want to explore with you is how we love and how that is a reflection of Gds love for us. I would like to do that in a way that will give us a real context for what that’s about by looking at Torah’s teaching for us in its broadest sense and how relevant it is, the experience of HKBhu’s love for us in terms of our overarching relationship with him and how crucial that is, how central that is for us as Jews.
Something of a chiddush of the Baal Shem Tov to put love back into the center of Jewish life. I’m not sure that’s still extent, I think recently that’s become more pronounced again. But many people are reluctant to notice or to admit that the centraliry of love is so pertinent to Jewish living. We’re very focused on living the law, on living the clarity of consequences for doing things wrong or right, but the broader concept of things, that we’re in a living relationship with HKBhu, which is grounded in His love for us and which is grounded in our love for Him is something which is less available to people.
So the way I want to go about this is by taking a look at, the very beginnings of what we’re in the world for, and getting a sense of what that’s about. The reason I want to do it that way, is because I think that the only way to get in contact with that experience of HKBu ‘s love for us and our love for Him embedded in context, is realizing(….) that it’s
primary to what we’re here for, and it is. And I’m going to do that by sharing some insights (…) of man and why he was created the way he was created, and from there to begin to explore how it is that the Chumash describes our obligations or our experience that are expected of us as the endpoint of what life on our planet is for. So we’re going to look at today at the very beginning and at the very end, just in the context of the Chumash (…) to explore this, and then we’ll begin to explore, having established that context, a clarity of that experience, when we refer to that experience of His love for us and our love for him. I intend to not make these things vague, but to make them as defines and available to us, and even to suggest some practices to enhance us and elicit this in our lives more and more.
So that’s the plan, I believe I have eight sessions to do that in, I’m not sure we’ll complete everything, or at least we’ll get a good start.
So I’d like you to take a look with me at the way man comes to be on the planet, and there are two telling things that I think are relevant for us. If you could open up your chumash, to chapter two of Bereshit, verse four. Verswe four tells us that we are about to get the history of Heaven and Earth, “Eleh toldot….shamayim” These are the generations of the unfolding of Heaven and earth, when they were created, the day that Gd made earth and Heaven. Heaven and earth, earth and Heaven, switching them around is something of great interest, but right now we’re not going to pick (?) it up, but we are going to come back to this verse in a couple of minutes. Now the Torah describes the following, Now this story comes after, remember, we’ve been told the story of Creation in the first chapter, we have through the first movement of giving life and creating light to the end point of Shabbat, it’s all done, and we see, apparently all complete, and yet verse 2, verse five tells us something else, “V’chall siach..) There was no plant life. There was no field growth in the land. “Vechal esev…” And all the grasses of the field had not grown. “Ki lo…” Because GD had not made it rain upon the earth, and there was no man to work the ground. Now I have a somewhat daunting pasuk here, because I am told that the reason why there is no growth is because why? Looks like, you could say, that there’s no man to work the ground. But you could say there’s a conjunctive vav, the vav connecting and
there was no man to work the ground and that’s “ki….aretz” that Gd hadn’t yet made it rain. So maybe the reason why things (aren’t going?) is because Gd hadn’t made it rain. The fact is you can go to some very beautiful places on the planet where no man worked the ground and things are growing just fine. (laughing) They’re probably growing better than where people have interfered but you can have some very verdant pastures without having man to make them grow. So that the Torah should tell us that things aren’t growing because there’ man to work the ground sound s like a misapplication of what the clause is. And yet the Torah take pain to point out that indeed that is so, and that it is a relevant factor, and it’s not just that it’s not raining. So which is it? Is it that it’s not raining? Or is it that there’s no man to work the ground? It’s very hard to tell, and we’ll come back to thins.
“There was a fog that came up from the ground and it watered the entire planet. Then G-d created man, or formed man, from the earth, and He breathed into His nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being.” All right. One thing’s for sure. That there’s some kind of relationship here between things not growing, there not being not rain, and man being created. Do we see that? I mean, whatever we are going to say about the verses, and however we are going to understand the relationship between it not raining and man not having been made, it’s clear that somehow man’s being created is connected to the fact that this planet needs to flourish. And until there’s going to be a human being on it, it’s not going to happen.
Everyone see that? Now there’s a little bit of a problem here in the order in the verse and that is that in the order of the verses and that is that in verse six the planet is getting water, it looks like the planet is getting water, I mean there is a mist that is coming up from the ground and is watering everything, so why are you telling me that nothing can grow, because there’s no rain, if there’s a mist that is watering it all? So now hear the very powerful way in which the rabbis describe this event. They say the following: You know, it’s true that nothing’s growing because it’s not raining. But the reasons why it’s not raining is because there’s no man to work the ground, that’s why it’s not raining. Now they really mean this? Now what does it mean that there is no man to work the ground and why will be what will bring rain? And then they say, the meaning of the mist coming up
from the ground is in order to make it possible that man will be created. I”ll tell you what I mean by that. There’s this ground with all this dust and if you want to make a human being out of dust, you have to make all these particles of dust stick together, and how are you going to make them stick together if you don’t have water to the mixture? You have to put water in the mixture in order to form the dust into a body that’s going to hold the soul, and the way this is going to happen is by Gd bringing the mist from ground which is going to make it possible for man to be formed out of the dust. So hear it like this. You’ve got this planet, and listen carefully, so you’ve got this planet, nothing’s growing, well first of all, gee I thought that on the third day Gd made everything you know, in the plant kingdom, and everything was already growing on the third day. No, nothing's
growing, and I’ll tell you why, because there’s no rain. And I’ll explain to you why there’s no rain. Ah. Because there’s no human being to work the ground. I mean, human beings working the ground bring rain? And, in order to make a human being out of the ground, we’re going to bring water to the planet, and it will arrive from the bottom up, and it will emerge in a way that is going to water the top soil, so that that Gd will now take man and form him into a body, and there’s man. That’s the picture.
So, in order to appreciate how this works and why it’s going this way….’So here’s the picture. So Rashi says a crucial thing here, and it’s so important that it makes it worth it to me to teach, to share this with people. So many of us come into Judaism and practice it for many years, and f someone puts you to the test and says, What is it that you are in the world for? You know, here you are, it’s this mysterious phenomenon, you didn’t have to be here, and here you are, this conscious living breathing creature that has these astounding aspirations to sanctity and to justice and morality, and to doing good, experiencing relationships, coming into commitments with them, living and producing children, there’s a lot going on working hard, suffering, going through all of us, it’s not a simple matter, you know? And if you believe in the eternity of the soul, the presence of the soul, it becomes even more exacerbating considering that your soul is already in existence in the presence of Gd into a perfect and undivided relationship with Him and here you are, sent into this world and into this clod of dirt basically, which is your body and informed by the soul’s presence, and struggling always to achieve some kind of relationship with Him, a relationship with sanctity, a relationship with an inner life, and
my gosh, this is, You’ve got to have a good reason to do this to us. And most people, like when you ask them that, could you just give me an answer to that simple question, and it’s not so easy to find an answer to that question, but nevertheless, like if you were in business, and you needed to have a one liner. They have something called an elevator statement. You know, you get into the elevator with someone, and hey, he’s like a prospect for a sale, and you’re going to the sixth floor. The guy’s pressed sixth, so you’re going to the sixth floor. You have to tell him, before you get to the sixth floor, you have to be able to tell him what it is that you’re selling and convince him to buy it. So imagine you got into an elevator and someone says, “Look, I understand you’re Jewish. Tell me, what do you people say about why we’re here. Like, who are you, and what are you doing here. I mean really? So the elevator’s going up—second floor, third floor, fourth floor, you have something to say, so the best place to look to find where that statement is where man is created and here it is: So that there shall be rain.
That’s what the Torah says. Look, we’ve got a world that isn’t functioning. It’s missing something. I’ll tell you what it’s missing. It’s missing rain. How do we get the rain? We need a human being. And the reason is we want the rain is to get things to grow. If things don’t grow, it’s kind of a failed planet. So I’ll tell you why you’re here. Do you see those flowers? All those lovely trees? They need rain. That’s why you’re here. That’s what the Chumash has said. On the simplest reading of the Torah, that’s what it says, and I really believe in the simplest readings. I mean, that is very profound. First of all, who’s for who(m) on this planet. We’re used to assuming we’re here as the reason for creation, and that the planet serves us in that. It’s good that there’s a world, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to live, but the planet’s really here for us. But the Torah actually seems to right here, right now, seems to be giving a different perspective and that is it’s true that man is the last thing to be created, but it seems that he is created in order to allow all of that to function. So you really hear that the planet should really work. So who’s for who(m)? Is it me for the world or is the world for me? If you read (?) the verses, it looks like it’s we’re here for the world. student question and teacher comments)
Now it’s still not clear: How does working the ground make it rain? So I want to tell you I know it’s a better class with participation……
So it looks like we’re here in order to serve the world, but there’s this funny thing in the verse, “There is no man to work the ground.” So what’s going to happen when he starts working the ground. Apparently when he starts working the ground it’s going to cause it to rain. And at this point we’re a little stuck. Why would his working the round make it rain? Unless something happens when he works the ground that shifts in Creation such that now the avenue for rain is opened. Imagine yourself on this planet. Nothing growing. Completely desolate. There’s light out. There may be even clouds in the sky. But the ground is desolate, nothing growing. You start working the ground. Because somehow you have an embedded sense that working the ground is what you’re here to be doing and somehow that’s gonna make things grow. Where did that come from? Now let me remind you of something: You are the ground. You have been taken from the dust of the earth. So on whatever level ground knows its purpose, so do you. And yet now, you begin to actually act out, as a conscious creature, what the ground knows, that it is here that things should grow. And so you begin to work the ground driven by some mysterious force which is the very the ground itself from which you have been made. And now I’ll say something even more astounding, that you know you are actually the same you know you are actually the stuff you are made of. Quantity-wise, the water in your body is the same percentage of water that there is on the planet. That’s what the geologists and the biologists agree on, that it’s about 72% water on the planet and 72% water in your body, which is great for those who love gematria because 72 in the gematria of chesed, which is what water is the symbol of. Now chesed is the force in creation that is what holds things together. And we will begin to understand that more deeply as we progress. But chesed is the force in reality that holds things in unity. That’s what chesed is. That’s why it says in the Chumash that if a man marries his sister that he did her a chesed. That doesn’t mean that he did her a good deed, forget about chesed being good deeds, just follow me. That’s a chesed. Too much unity. Too much sticking together. Gotta get you out of the family into other possibilities, like other girls out there, not just your sister, not your mom, that’s really a force of reality which is a non-chesed force, to go and get married. Don’t ever mess that up. (student question) That’s because chesed holds things together. Gevurah pushes things apart. Getting married is an act of gevurah. Boy it is, also in an act of being
courageous and strong. It’s not an act of chesed. …That is why chesed is on a certain level a static principle and opposed to gevurah which is the dynamic of creation, which is what the rabbis teach, which is that the world was initially created in din, which means moving out into particularization, or particl-ization—is there a word like that, becoming particles? Anyway, so Gd added water to the ground in the exact quantity that is what this planet holds, the same 72%. That’s because we are the planet. And so the planet knows to work the ground, the planet knows that’s what it needs to happen. It doesn’t need some new additional element here. Now what? Now we have this conscious being, and it’s the consciousness of the planet, really. Now we’re being working the ground, and now there’s trouble. I’m working the ground, I know that things have to grow, and it needs to rain. No rain. There needs to be water for things to grow. Now I don’t know if there needs to be water, or what I know or don’t know, but I know that something’s not working. Now we’re really in it.
Now I want to show you something in this story that I’m telling you that is the story of the first movements of things, and that there is knowing and there is knowing. And this is really important. ….(27:40)
There’re knowing when I pass on information to you and I tell you, you know what? This place needs some water, OK? Needs some rain. All right, and what’s next? What else are we going to talk about today? Well, I need it really needs to rain. OK, I already learned that fact, I know it really needs to rain, all right, next? I also need to eat. OK, uh, fine, what’s the next thing you want to teach me? You need to sleep, OK, good. Gee, this is fascinating, I’m writing it all down, I’ll study it tonight, are you going to test me on it tomorrow? I’ll make sure I got it all? Yeah, you know that, right? Everyone sitting there knows that. Do you? You know when you know it? When you’re hungry. That’s when you know it. That’s not having it up here. That’s your whole being knows it. I’m hungry. And you know when you know it more? When you’re thirsty and hungry. And you know when you really know it? When there’s no water around and you haven’t drunk in three days. Or eaten in three days. And you know when you know it even more? When your life depends on it. There’s nothing else except that. That is da’at. That is what’s called da’at. Knowing in a way that you are at one with what is being known. And that’s the only real knowing. All other knowing is sort of a parable to knowing. That is
da’at which is perfect union with, as it appears, as I’m sure you all in the Chumash when we are told that man knew his wife. Nothing else is going on for them at that moment. Nothing else. That’s knowing.
So what would happen if Gd were have to informed man, so to speak, you know the planet needs rain. OK, fine, That’s a whole different picture than man working at the ground, toiling, and nothing’s happening. Now he knows that there needs to be rain. So let me read you a deep Rashi which is going to give us the answer to the question of What are we doing here and who we are. And Rashi says int on this verse. He says, You know, everything is ready in this world. We’re on the sixth day, that’s when man’s created. We’ve already got the plants growing. I mean, what’s the big deal? Why does it say here that there is no “siach ha sadeh”, that there’s no “esev hasadeh”? Why? So Rashi says the following: Now listen carefully to the way he says it, “Because there was no man to work the ground.” And then he goes on: No one was there to recognize the goodness of rain. And when man came and knew (da’at) that they are the world’s need, he prayed for them and they came down. And all of the trees and grass grew.” Beautiful. Let’s go over this, because this is not Judaism 101, this is Judaism 000. This is like where you have to begin, because this is the first time we are here on the planet. So we have to listen to the Rashi because he is telling us how to focus our lives. Because if you know why you are here and what you’re here for, then you are able to direct your living in a way which is oriented towards what your purpose is. It’s like a carpenter who’s been given a piece of wood. If he doesn’t know what the heck he’s been given it for, then he’ll just start with the saw and you know, we’ll just see what comes out of it, you know, it’ll be interesting to see what comes out of it. That’s what happens if you don’t have clarity of purpose. What are you supposed to do when you are walking down the street and got nothing going on in your head and suddenly all these thoughts start bubbling up. What are you supposed to do with that? How are you supposed to direct them? Are you supposed to direct them? Let alone things you do with people and how you treat them. I’m just talking about, like you know, in one of those moments of spare time. You wouldn’t want to get into a jet plane without a destination. (34:10)You’d just be playing around.
So here’s Rashi. Rashi says the following. Three things he teaches us, which could be divided into four. (34:33) So there’s three things that become four in Rashi. First thing,
there’s no man to recognize the good. So I understand that I’m put in the world, first of all to note the good, appreciate the good. Second, “kevan….olam” comes, man and he knows that the world needs him, aware compassion, compassion which derives from awareness…(he’s working the ground and he knows it with all of his being (36:18) he knows the world needs him and third, he prays, turns to his Source, for a blessing.
Appreciation, awareness, compassion, connection.
Acceptance, connection, perception, gratitude.
You know, those of you who know Hebrew, siach ha sadeh, is what Yitzchak does when he goes out lasuah ba sadeh. Rashi’s understanding, actually he knows from the Gemara, is that there is no conversation in the field. And more deeply, there’s no conversation in the field, in a sense, that there’s no field. A field, I mean, by which there is a context of meaning. Field in a sense not just where things grow, but field like in the mathematical sense, like in an energy field, you know like you’re in, Yitchak becomes a man of the field, by the way, because din is all about creating context in interconnections between different parts. That’s what a field is. So that there was no siach basadeh means that there was no conscious communication in the field. But anyway, I said I was going to be simple, so let’s get back to simple. That’s actually very simple, it’s even more simple that the overt part of the text, because it’s the abstraction of it. In Hebrew, to make something pashut is to undress it of its dressings. So when you get to the story within the story, you take away its dressings and make it more pashut.
So what we have here now is the seminal statement of why we’re here. So you’re in that elevator with someone and they say to you, like, “So who are you and what are you doing here?” So I’ll tell you, I’m here to appreciate the life I’ve been given, to appreciate good. I’m here to be aware, in a compassionate state, to really know things deeply, in a way which is compassionate knowing, and to connect to my Creator. “Gee, how do you know that?” Oh, the Torah said so.
That’s what it means “there was no man to work the ground.” There needed to be a conscious element of Creation, a conscious creature in Creation who would come to work the ground, and only in working the ground would he ever achieve the possibility of the kind of knowing, which is the knowing that I described before, where it’s real life stuff, not just some intellectual quantity. Yeah, and why is that important? ‘Cause that’s how
you connect. That’s how we connect. I know we connect by touching each other, that’s one level of connecting, but it’s a much deeper level of connecting when we’re also touching each other and we’re also really knowing each other in a way in which we are deeply aware and fully given over to and involved with in a completely integrated way with the other whom we’re touching. Do we all agree that that’s a different kind of knowing and a different kind of connecting? See, that won’t happen between man and the planet, and that won’t happen between man and himself, for he is of the planet. And it certainly won’t happen between man and his Maker unless he is fully in da’at of what is, what the need is, compassion, and caring about it and turning to Him. Now there’s a lot of elements there, but they primarily boil down to a word which we use often and which is ahavah. So it has a lot to do with love. Compassionate, knowing, awareness, being given over to, connecting with. We’re not done, but there’s a lot here, which means we’re in one of the most powerful verses in the Chumash because it tells us so much.
That’s stage one. I said today that we were going to see the beginning and that we’re going to see the end. Right? And that we have a bunch of classes in the middle to fill in stuff that happens as it spreads out. This, by the way, is one of the more abstract classes, because when you want to make something that’s broad and inclusive, so you need to sort of abstract the principles, and you can fill in the details and you come down into the picture and stories, and people in the stories, etc.
(43:15) Questions
Love is not just about sticking things together and being committed to their existence, which is what chesed is… and ahavah is something more than that, so therefore I don’t want to identify ahavah with chesed.
The soul is a still small voice, but when it’s accessed powerful things happen from there and then it can be heard more powerfully. That’s on the level of just being conscious of what’s going on…The soul speaks through many pathways, but to answer you simply, It’s a lot easier to be aware that you’re hungry than to be aware that you have a yearning for Gd.
So now let me tell you a little about the end also, so that we can have the story, so to speak, complete. But before I get there I want to point out something that is crucial in the way Rashi describes things to us, and that is, he says, that the reason why there wasn’t
any rain is because there wasn’t anyone who would be “makir b’tovatam” Listen to this picture, this is like a wild picture that we’re getting. Gd has created this planet, right? And the place is not functioning right. Things aren’t growing. So God, this all-powerful Creator, is up in Heaven or wherever He is, waiting. What’s He waiting for? He’s waiting for someone to see the good that He’s waiting to give. It’s not going to be worth it to Him, so to speak, to do anything more, if there’s not going to be someone who’s there to see the good He has made Himself, so to speak, dependent upon us. And this isn’t the only place Gd does this. The other place Gd does this is with Himself. What’s the first thing Gd does when He creates light? He sees that it’s good, that’s all. Gd simply looks at His Creation as says, “vyar Elokim et haor, ki tov.” How lovely. It’s good. Gd is The makir tove. He’s the One who recognizes good. That’s a divine act. It’s not only a divine act. It’s the first divine act in relationship to the world. He makes the light and then He sees that it’s good. This is really important. I’m doing this very simply but these are life guides. Then He makes the Heaven—and there’s a reason he doesn’t look down and says that it’s good because it’s about division and machloket and problems, etc. but then on the third day He makes plants, etc. and He sees them that they are good, and then on the fourth day He makes the orbs and the Heavens and He sees them that it’s good, and then on the fifth day He makes the birds and the fish and He sees them that they are good, and then on the sixth day He makes the animals and He sees that they are good, and then He looks at it all and He sees that it’s very good. And now He’s waiting for someone who will be in His image. How are you in Gd’s image? What the first that Rashi says that we’re created to do? To do what Gd does—see that it is good. That’s all. The deepest and the simplest thing that could be.
First thing, tov. Of course we want to go deeper into what “tov” is. What do we mean by “good”? It’s going to be really important. But G’d ‘s not going to continue this creation unless there is an aware being that is going to see and appreciate the good. So you see, it’s embedded right there. That Gd wants that there should be those who will connect to His goodness. And as we are going to learn, there is no higher pleasure that that, to connect to what is good. On all levels, whether it be physical life, or an ethical life, or in spiritual life, to connect to what is good. So Gd is not going to move at all until that happens.
There are two things embedded in that. One is what we are called upon to, and the other, that Gd is, so to speak, vulnerable, He has made Himself vulnerable, He can’t get done what He wants to have done, unless we respond by becoming like Him. In becoming like Him, we connect to Him in a very deep way. But is there is not a recipient for His goodness, then the whole point will be undone. Vulnerability, then, is the beginning of Gd’s relationship with His world. And that is the opening to the possibility of relationship. You can’t have a relationship if it’s all you forcing the other. There will be no love or connection if it’s all you forcing the other.
So I’ll tell you something really deep. And that is the way that Gd speaks to man the very first time, I’ll tell you a most astounding thing, if you take a look in the Chumash, just a little ahead of where we were. So Gd has created man, right, chapter 2, verse 6, 7 He’s made man, man is the consciousness of the planet now, Gd is awaiting that the planet come to know Gd and His goodness, so I’m actually saying it this way in a sense that dulls a little bit of the issue of who is for who, exactly. Are we for the planet? Or is the planet for us? Oh, are you something other than the planet? Gee, I didn’t know that you were something different than the planet is. You’re going to ask if you’re for the planet or if the planet is for you—what the heck are you talking about? What kind of Western dichotomous way of looking at things is that? You are the planet, man! You were brought out of the planet, you are the dust of the earth! That’s what you are! Cut that stuff out! That’s one. Now, two. Now watch what happens when Gd has now made man, gave him a soul, planted the Garden of Eden, he’s got this beautiful place. Beautiful Garden of Eden, it’s really lovely. Beautiful trees growing there, rivers flowing through it, and then in verse fifteen, Gd takes man to put him into the garden. And He puts him in and rests him in the Garden of Eden, to work it and to cherish it, to guard it. What’s of great interest to me is the word He “took” man. It’s the first time Gd interacts with man. He’s made him. Now there’s this human being on the planet. So just like we’re looking at that first creation to get a sense of what we’re here for, so now I want to look at the first interaction. To get a sense of how that interplay occurs between us and Gd. Makes sense? It’s always the way to go. Trust me.
So then we have, verse fifteen we have Gd commanding man, you can eat from all the trees, but don’t eat from the etz ha data tov v’rah. I once read by someone of a deep
halachic orientation, is that the first time man interacts with man is when He commands him, as it says in verse 16, “He commanded him”. That’s a Nomian vision of Judaism. An orientation of being commanded and responding to the command, that is true, but I want to claim that it’s secondary. Because before Gd commands man, He does something else. And that is He “takes” man to put him in the Garden of Eden. Now here I’m going to rely on how the rabbis teach us this. And Rashi says something that is so crucial. And that is: And that is, what does it mean by “vayikach Elokim et haAdam?” How did He take him? Are you telling me He picked him up and put him down in Gan Eden? “That’s where you live, boy! Been somewhere else ‘til now, now you’re here!” Is that what that means? It could mean that. And now let me tell you something. You can eat from all the trees, but don’t eat from that one! That’s one picture. That’s many people’s picture. That is not chazal’s picture, and they note the deepest thing. That word vayikach appears again and again in the context of marriage, and it becomes the word for marriage in the Chumash later in parshat Ki Tetze when we are told ki yikach ishah That’s the only place in the Torah where we’re told about a man marrying a woman. He takes her. So I don’t know what you think about marriage, if that’s the way it works too. But if you don’t then you’re on the right side of the picture because Rashi says, What does vayikach mean? So listen to this beautiful Rashi. He took him in the sense of I’m taken by you. Something very attractive drew me towards that person. SO he was taken by words, beautiful words that Gd spoke to him. And then He seduced him, or tempted him to go into the Garden of Eden--Wow! That’s first contact. Gd speaks to him, saying, “Adam, what a beautiful place, that Gan Eden. What marvelous possibilities it offers you.” I don’t know what He said. I would love to know what He said. Go in there. That’s Vayikach. That’s first contact between Gd and man. So now Gd has to wait. Will he go in? Won’t he go in? What’s going to happen? It’s up to him.
A couple of weeks ago I had a seminal experience with my 3-year old granddaughter. “Come on over, Hallel! Come on over.” “No!” “Come on, give Saba a kiss.” “No!” “Hallel, Maybe a hug?” “No!” Oh well. Now I could of grabbed her. But it wouldn’t have been the same. HKB hu actually put himself into the situation. Come on, Adam, it’s a nice place. Rashi tells us that He used beautiful descriptions. … na’im, me lashon na’eh. Why? Because his heart won’t be in it. Because this isn’t a planet in which
Gd is forcing upon us. It’s a life in which we are guided to a chosen relationship. And that requires also the vulnerability of a partner who can say “no”. The vulnerability I’m now talking on the part of the one who is seeking it. If you are not going to be open to that then you’ll never be able to live relationship.
Just yesterday my parents were recounting an old friend, guy’s fifty-five years old, never got married. Why? Well, he’s a lawyer and he saw too many people get divorced. I hold that’s why you read the ketubah under the chuppah. Hey, it’s all very beautiful right now, but guess what, it can end. Some people hang it on the wall. I used to think that was a weird thing. Why are you putting your ketubah on the wall, isn’t that what he’s got to pay her when they get divorced? It’s also about the thing she owes her when they’re married, but what’s that doing on the wall? Hey, buddy, she can say “no”, OK? He can say “no”, OK? That accompanies a life of love, and if you’re afraid of that, you’ll never have it. May it never be. So HKB hu ‘ls first contact with man is vayikach , it’s like a marriage, and I’m not playing chassidish games with the words. That’s what the word is in the Chumash. And Rashi tells us, it was all about opening up the pathway to a aconnection whicha human being would be able to be drawn in by choice. And where HKB hu would wait for someone who would be able to recognize the goodness, and thereby live in relationship. So this is the beginning, I guess we didn’t get to the end today…..
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A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
A Series of sessions with Rav Daniel Kohn on Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, Shlomo Hamelech's song of love, which rests on the Shalom and Malchut that Shlomo Hamelech and his nation embodied. It's the song of Masculine and Feminine, Sun and Moon, Creator and Created. It's the song of Malchut
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
“Shir Hashirim asher l’Shlomo” – “Hamelech shehashalom shelo”
Shiri Hashirim could only have been written by Shlomo, who was the shleimut of the heh – of the malchut. Both his malchut and Shir Hashirim represented an answer to the problematic in the relationship of male and female in creation. It’s when the femininity of the heh, of malchut, finally achieves wholeness. It’s the fullness of the receptive power of creation, and the revelation of the mutuality of love between God and His creation.
Zohar – All the blessings were brought into this world… and ‘she’ became completely beautiful and full … when the sun becomes rectified and shines forth.
The Shleimut of abba and imah – Chochmah and Binah. “Mata’i timloch bTzion…” The crying of the rosh yeshiva who finally gets out of his pure intellectual binah and feels the deep inner longing for Imah and the unity of abba and imah.
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
The Story of Shlomo’s Coronation and David’s “Crowning” Achievement Through Bat Sheva
(1 Melachim 1:11-31). The Book of Melachim opens with this scene, which is not only the story of Shlomo’s coronation through Bat Sheva (“The crown that his [Shlomo’s] mother placed upon his head” – Shir Hashirim 3;11), but also the clarification by David of what it means to be a king, not as someone who is simply “in control” of his passions, but as someone who has integrated those passions into his being such that he is not aroused by Avishag but can cause Bat Sheva to wipe herself 13 times (per Sanhedrin 22a).
Avishag and the “shigayon” of the Rambam – end of Sefer Deah – Hilchot Teshuva 10:6 – to be “crazy in love” with God.
The placing of story of Yitro prior to giving of the Torah is part of God’s invitation to humanity to participate in the divine unfolding on its terms, an invitation which must necessarily precede the revelation of Torah.
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/ravdanielk
Shir Hashirim came into the world with the inauguration of the Beit Hamikdash, the day that the sun and the moon wore the crown together. There could be no Shir Hashirim until there was a Kadosh Hakadoshim. The Temple was a temple of love.
G-d Appeasements of the moon (Chullin 60b)
1) Seen by day and by night
2) The Moadim – the moon provides the points of meeting – the moadim - between Creator and created and participate in the dynamic of time.
3) The Tzadikim – who are also named katan and who reflect God's first conception
4) The korban chatat l’Hashem (Bamidbar 28:15), “God’s sin offering” offered by the Jewish People on Rosh Chodesh. The consumption of God’s korban on the altar is a testament to God’s own disappearance in the absence of an other’s awareness of God’s presence. This provides true reciprocity to the relationship between giver and receiver.
Emunah is the motherly response to the challenge of Amalek, the challenge of keri, of a chaotic tohu v’vohu that becomes ordered through the application of human awareness. Shlomo’s mother – Immah – provides this emunah as the crown, the awareness of a divine ratzon that provides order to a chaotic exterior.
“Who’s in charge?” This was the Moon’s initial challenge and it introduced “outsider” consciousness into creation and was mirrored in the Chet Etz Hadaat of Chavah’s taking from the fruit of the tree.
The day of Shlomo’s coronation is described in Melachim 1, chapter 1. King David, Natan, the prophet, Batsheva, and Avishag all play crucial roles. Per the Midrash (Sanhedrin 22a), Avishag taunts David with his apparent impotence, and David, through Batsheva, proves her very wrong.
Avishag is related to term “Shogeh,” the pure love for God described by the Rambam as the ultimate goal of love and of deah (Rambam Hilchot Teshuva 10:6).
All reflect the nature of God's name Havayah - as a meeting of Creator and created.
More teaching from Rav Daniel on our facebook page
Shir Hashirim came into the world with the inauguration of the Beit Hamikdash, the day that the sun and the moon wore the crown together. There could be no Shir Hashirim until there was a Kadosh Hakadoshim.
The four interactions of God and the Moon culminate in the Korban chatat of Rosh Chodesh, which most powerfully expresses the dependence of the mashpiah – God – on the mekabel in order to manifest God’s identity and presence in creation. It’s this dynamic that is the motivating force of creation.
Emunah is the motherly response to the challenge of Amalek, the challenge of keri, of a chaotic tohu v’vohu that becomes ordered through the application of human awareness. Shlomo’s mother – Immah – provides this emunah as the crown, the awareness of a divine ratzon that provides order to a chaotic exterior.
“Who’s in charge?” This was the Moon’s initial challenge and it introduced “outsider” consciousness into creation and was mirrored in the Chet Etz Hadaat of Chavah’s taking from the fruit of the tree.
The day of Shlomo’s coronation is described in Melachim 1, chapter 1, in the scene with King David, Natan, the prophet, Batsheva, and Avishag, the beautiful woman who lies in the king’s lap to keep him warm, but who was forbidden him. Per the Midrash (Sanhedrin 22a), Avishag taunts David with his apparent impotence, and David, through Batsheva, proves her very wrong.
Avishag is related to term “Shogeh,” the “love-sickness” for God described by the Rambam as the ultimate goal of love and of deah (Rambam Hilchot Teshuva 10:6)
Moon,
God’s original desire for a responsive other-ness is reflected in the moon
The moon’s kinship with the others called “katan”:
Yaakov – Yisrael alah b’machshava – God’s 1st conception
Shmuel – the coronator of kings, the one who transitions us out of the age of shoftim to the age of malchut, to a recognition of our interconnectedness as the ground of our identity
David – The identity that is nothing other a set of relationships
The moon’s appeasements (Chullin 60b):
1 – you’re seen both by day and by night
2 – the Jewish people count their holidays by you, their moadim – the points of meeting between creator and created
The many songs of Torah – as per the Zohar
Moshe’s song – a song of danger and salvation
David’s song – the song of the Shechina’s beauty
Shlomo’s song – the song of love, when all the worlds are in love and the Sun and Moon are finally united.
Yisrael alah b'machshavah - Israel arose in God's thought - this is God's first moment of self-awareness, of the possibility for an existence outside of God. Yisrael is God's bechor, God's first conception.
Parshat Bo Summary - Bo, specifically, Hachodesh Hazeh, is where Torah "should have started," with mitzvah, with God's expressed need for our willful participation in creation. Bo is the transition to this stage of responsive relationship with God.
Awareness is the most pristine form of responsiveness, and the moon is the ideal metaphor for this responsiveness/reciprocity. It’s she who crowns the “king,” providing that point of responsiveness of awareness the Creator was seeking in creating a world.
To be a metzuveh, to be given a mitzvah, is to be empowered with the capacity to expand the awareness of the divine.
In this first mitzvah, Hachodesh Hazeh emerges in the relationship – in the space between (Moshe and Aharon.)
Malchut is an emergent phenomenon. It's the integrated identity that is nothing of its own because it's nothing other that the relationships between its elements.
Malchut is what distances Torah and deconstructionism.
Love it the ultimate emergent phenomenon, the ultimate malchut that emerges out of mind.
To be a "tzelem Elokim," created in God's image, means possessing a unique power to define our own identity. Man was created with a question - Naaseh Adam? - as an expression of man's power of self-transcendence.
Man is an emergent phenomenon
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the tree of personalization/differentiation.
God's appeases of the moon for her being made small - katan.(Chullin 60b) – by likewise calling the tzadikim - Yaakov, Shmuel, David - katan.
The world of din - created first - was a frozen world. The introduction of rachamim into the world is the introduction of dynamism, of the capacity for growth and development – the capacity for returning to the womb and re-emerging.
Man has a unique existential incompleteness, a question mark hanging over creation, which is reflected in a unique ability to define his own identity. Man himself embodies the dynamism of rachamim
God needs man's korban. The New Moon korban was "for God," a healing of the rift created by the moon's diminishment.
Man has a uniquely powerful participation in existence, and uniquely reciprocal relationship with his Creator.
The emergence of Nukva - of woman - is the birth of subjectivity.
Subjectivity's challenge - separation/alienation.
Speech as personal expression must be coupled with de'ah - a connective consciousness.
The Alter Rebbe – the Baal Hatanya - first Rebbe of Chabad – was named Shne'ur Zalman, expressing through his name his role in bringing peace (Zalman is Yiddish of Shlomo) between the two lights (Shnei Or) - the sun and the moon, masculine and feminine, the Godly soul and the animal soul. (This shiur was given on 24 Tevet -the Yahrzheit of Shne’ur Zalman.)
"There were no greater days in Israel than the fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur..."Go out, maidens of Jerusalem, and look on King Solomon, and on the crown with which his mother has crowned him..." Mishna Taanith 4:8
It's the woman - the mother - Batsheva and Ruth - who crowns the king, repairing the rift created by the moon. It’s the moon which first manifests the consciousness of "using" the crown, a consciousness which results in 'memshalah' - rulership - over day and night.
This fruit-oriented consciousness is mirrored by Chavah, resulting in Adam being memshal over her.
Shir Hashirim Asher L'Shlomo. This is the work of Shlomo, the one man about whom it says that God loved (2 Shmuel 12:24). It's the realization of Malchut. It's the moon coming into its fullness, as expressed by the prophet's name for Shlomo - Yedidya - the yud-dalet - 14 - coming into yud-heh - 15 - the day of the moon's fullness and Shlomo being the 15th generation since Avraham. It was the climactic realization of the mission of shalom achicha that Yaakov sent Yosef on, making peace between the two dominant tribal energies of Yosef and Yehuda.