The Torah is not a history book. The outer events of our forefathers’ lives are recorded in the Torah, but the meaning of these events and the intentions of the protagonists are recorded in the inner aspect of the Torah, the Zohar. It’s when we put the inner intentions together with the events, we can begin to understand why these stories are important for us today in living our own lives.

In this shiur  we look at one example in which Yaakov teaches us how to handle our own selfishness and egoism. We discover that before we plan to do a mitzvah, our own yetzer hara comes to us as an inner voice telling us that since our work is not perfect it’s not worth doing. This is the voice of Laban, who claimed all Yaakov’s work for his own. “The daughters are my daughters, and the sons are my sons, and the animals are my animals, and all that you see is mine.”( Gen.33:43)  

What does Yaakov teach us to say to this inner voice?
He says “I dwelt with Laban yet I kept the Torah and mitzvot.” We need to ignore it. We need to raise ourselves up with pride in the fact that we are the children of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, and have faith that God takes pleasure in our work, in whatever form it takes.

But then “Yaakov sent messengers to Esau.” This action of Yaakov takes us by surprise. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? But here again Yaakov is teaching us an important lesson. After we have done the mitzvah we need to go to the opposite extreme, and consider how much our wills to receive for ourselves alone are really the basis of our work.

What is Esau’s response? He sas, I have plenty my brother, Keep what is yours!” In other words, here our inner voice of the yetzer hara is saying exactly the opposite! it says,”you are so righteous, you have nothing more to do!” It wants to convince us that our work is perfect, so that we rest on our laurels and don’t prgress another inch!

What does Jacob do? He entreats Esau to accept his gift and humbles himself before him. In the same way, we also need to realize how much our wills to receive for ourselves alone are involved in our service to God. We need to ignore the inner voice of Esau , and separate from it going our own way into the Land of Yisrael, the consciousness that is in affinity of form with God until we merit to come to Beit El, the house of God.

This podcast is dedicated lilui nishmat my dear mother, Chaya bat Menachem haLevi

Material taken from Birkat Shalom ” Al HaTorah, Parhsat Vayishlach, and the Zohar with Perush haSulam Parahst Vayishlach, beginnning

We all experience our thoughts as being our own. They feel like ours. We don’t usually consider where our thoughts arise from, and we either dismiss our thoughts or act on them automatically, without particularly questioning whether this is what we really want to do.

But Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag, the great master Kabbalist, teaches that our thoughts do not originate from us, they come to us from God.

All the thoughts that come into our minds are the work of the Creator. But this does not accord with the way we feel things. We think that we attract our thoughts from someplace, or that our thoughts arise within us.  Our thoughts feel like our thoughts. But this is a complete falsehood, the greatest of all lies. That we think that we own our thoughts is the greatest lie of all.

The truth is, that it is God who sends even the most subtle of thoughts into our minds, and is through this means that He motivates us, moving us to act through the thoughts He sends us. It is through this means that He motivates us and moves us

Just as the earth cannot feel who is sending it the rain that causes the seeds to sprout, so we cannot feel who is sending our thoughts to us that create within us motivation or needs. This is because until a thought has entered our minds, we cannot actually think it. And once it is in the domain of our minds, it feels like it is ours.

God sends us thoughts one after the other, in a tailor- made sequence, in order to move each one of us further along the path that will bring us into affinity of form with Him and thus enable us to receive all the good and delight that God purposes for each and every one of us.

So God sends to us a series of thoughts and feelings, both good and bad. Thoughts and feelings, which are organized according to the  Divine providence, tailored uniquely and intimately for every one of us to bring us to the fulfilment of our soul’s purpose. No one shall be left out, as it is written in Samuel II 14:14 “even the banished one shall not be cast out.” 

Pri Chacham Sichot.

From what Rabbi Ashlag writes, we can see that we have here an amazing channel of communication and of contact with our Creator. It’s a channel of communication which is intimate and true, inspiring us to turn toward God, a channel that is always available to us. It is ready for each one of us to use, so long as we acknowledge it and consciously use it. Indeed we need to give thanks for every thought we receive, and feel great joy that God Himself is communicating with us, demonstrating His care for each of us as a unique individual who is precious in His eyes.

I live in tsfat but today I am traveling to Jerusalem. I am  looking forward to seeing my sisters ,  my daughter-in law and my little grandchildren, who all live there. I hope to travel on the buses and enjoy the new light rail. Today Jerusalem is a city filled with life just as the prophet Zecharia prophesied 2000 years ago.

Thus says the LORD of hosts: There shall yet old men and old women sit in the streets of Jerusalem, every man with his walking stick in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city will be full of boys and girls playing

Zecharia 8:4-5

Yet, this coming  Sunday, the fast of Tisha b’av falls and I, with other orthodox and religious Jews will be sitting on the floor, mourning the destruction of the Temple —an event which took place on this day 2000 years ago, One cannot help asking,  Doesn’t this seem like an anachronism? It seems as if I, together with other religious Jews are stuck in a time warp and we are still behaving as we did for centuries, mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. We seem to be acting as if we haven’t noticed the miraculous return of the Jews to Zion and the incredible rebuilding of Jerusalem. Indeed could our behavior be considered as ingratitude?

 If we consider only the physical, the external, then we can still say that the redemption isn’t complete because Jews still have difficulty ascending onto Temple Mount and praying there, and the Temple is still not rebuilt. On the other hand , if we apply the principle of Dayeinu, being thankful for every step to redemption, then our Tisha bAv mourning does seem hard to justify.

However, when we look at this period of the year through the lens of the inner teachings of the Torah and the inner work we need to do on Tisha BaAv, the picture looks very different.  

The Zohar teaches us that the meaning of Jerusalem is the innermost aspect of our heart. It is the soul within us. Jerusalem is the point of holiness, the Divine presence that dwells within each and every one of us. Therefore, on Tisha b Av we mourn for the fact that the Divine aspect of ourselves is still hidden from ourselves. Our Divinity and the Divine potential within our fellow beings is hidden. Furthermore, when we look at our relationship with the Divine spark within us, we see that in the minute details of our thoughts, our words, and our actions, we don’t often place our relationship with God as the highest aspect of our priorities, as it should be.  

 By looking at the present through the prism of the past, we may gain an understanding of the tikkun we need to do in the present in order to rectify and correct the way we relate to our inner Jerusalem.

On this day, as we know, tragedies took place throughout history to the Jewish people, the main ones that we relate to being the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and the subsequent bitter exile and dispersion of the Jewish people from this land.

But there was one that was prior to that and indeed is the root of them all. This was the rejection of the Land of Israel by the spies.

 The Zohar relates the land of Israel as the consiousness of being in dvekut with God, in Oneness with the Creator. Just as He is compassionate so must we be compassionate. But that also means refusing to listen to the demands of our egoistic selfish personalities, which manifest as our will to receive for ourselves alone, and which is called the yetzer hara.

On Tisha B’Av, the Children of Israel rejected the physical land of Israel. Today, are we committing the sin of rejecting the consiousness of the land of Israel? If we look at the state of ourselves and the state of the world we cannot say that the Divine consciousness is at the top of our agenda. On the contrary, our inner Jerusalem is still in exile, weeping and mourning, for we are not paying attention to Her.

By each of us spending this Tisha B’Av in contemplating our inner reality and mourning the loss of godliness in our lives, we can start to take responsiblity, and thus create a vessel for the light of Divine consciousness, so it may permeate our lives and the lives of all who share our existence with us.

This podcast is dedicated in loving memory of my dear mother, Chaya bat Menachem Mendel a”h

and what is the Torah?

The Zohar teaches us that  the essence of the Torah, the essence of God, and the essence of the soul are one.

But we cannot attain the essence of God directly —even the essence of ourselves, our soul, is hidden from us. So the one aspect of this godly essence that we are given as a gift to grasp and to attain, is the Torah. When we learn, immerse ourselves, in the Torah, we are connecting directly with the Holy blessed One and with our own soul. And this is the great  gift that we are given every Shavuot, to renew our connection with the Divine essence.

But we’re not just a soul, we are also made up of the body. These two components, while they need each other, also oppose each other. Our body aspect, our egoism, tells us, “Whatever you do to better yourself in the material sense, or whatever actions you take that increase your importance in the world are good.” Whereas the soul, says, “Whatever we can do in giving unconditionally, whether to God or to our fellow human being, is good, because such actions bring us close to God.”

Our body aspect is more familiar to us:  it starts to grow the moment we are born, whereas our soul incarnates later. The voice of the ego is strident, fitting in with the messages we get from the society around us and from the media, whereas the soul whispers and we have to strain to hear its voice.

So how are we going to want to contact the soul? How are we going to decide that the yetzer hara, our evil inclination, is really our worst enemy ? How are we going to want the Torah, our connection with our soul?

 In this podcast, we study a beautiful article of Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag in which he shows us that it is God, who, when He comes down into the mind and heart of a person, as He came down on Mount Sinai, shows us the reality of our own egoism, so we will want to receive the Torah again, here and now, with all our heart.

Podcast luilui nishmat Shalom Lev ben David haLevi Segal z”l

Based on article of Rabbi Baruch Shalom Halevi Ashlag, Sefer Hama’marim Volume 2 תשמז article 18

When we first look at the Haggadah, it seems to be a collection of somewhat disconnected paragraphs, with the overall motif being the story of the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt.
 However, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai teaches in the Zohar that the Torah is not a history book. Rather, it is a book of instruction that deals with our present day relationship with the Divine. Just as a person wears clothes, so does the Torah itself wear a garment. The garments of the Torah are the stories we find within it. But just as nobody is silly enough to mistake the garment for the person, so we need to look beneath the surface of these stories to find the real essence of the Torah. To take the stories at face value and think that they are all the Torah is, is just as silly as relating to a person only from the outer clothes that he or she wears.
 So when we sit down on Seder night to read the Haggadah, our purpose is not to tell a story of what happened 3000 years ago, but to examine in what way we are in exile now from ourselves and from our Creator, and to discover what redemption from that exile comprises. Packed within the words of the Haggadah is both the soul’s experience of exile, and our joy in redemption, in the reconnection that God uniquely grants us on Seder night, the holy night of freedom. Only when we recognize our own exile we can value the freedom that God gives us the opportunity to gain.

These motifs are very well portrayed in the section of the Haggadah on the four sons. It is a section that seems baffling, even silly when regarded in an external manner, but when we explore it using our knowledge of the language of the Zohar and the insights we gain from Kabbalah as taught by the great Kabbalist Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag we discover that this is a section that clearly defines what constitutes redemption and what constitutes exile, and also examines our sometimes unexpected responses to the light of redemption.

The archetype of exile is the Children of Israel’s servitude in Egypt. The Sages teach us that this exile was in fact a spiritual exile, even more than it was a physical exile. Indeed if the spiritual enslavement hadn’t happened the physical servitude would have been impossible.

Rabbi Ashlag, in a letter to his students, explains how the slavery of the Children of Israel by the Egyptians came about. He starts off with an interesting statement from the Talmud on the rules concerning the cities of refuge. A Torah student who has committed manslaughter must be exiled to a city of refuge: and in that case his Rabbi is exiled with him.

The Sages ask: How could such a terrible thing happen to a student of Torah learning with a true Rabbi? Why didn’t his Torah learning protect him from such an event? Rabbi Ashlag points out that this mischance happened to the student because he was in some sense already in exile from his teacher. His estimation of his teacher had gone down so that he no longer valued his teacher and was therefore unable to receive faith and true service of God from him.

By looking carefully at the verses from the Scripture describing the beginning of the exile of the Children of Israel we find a similar process: Joseph the Tzaddik and his generation died, and a new King arose who didn’t recognize Joseph. Rabbi Ashlag points out that it wasn’t the physical presence of Joseph that was missing , it was the way the Children of Israel valued him in their heart. They were not valuing the Tzaddik in their heart , and thus allowed a new governance, —the new King — to conduct their thought speech and actions, instead of the faith that the Tzaddik had taught them.

Thus they became under the dominance of the Kilpah, the evil light of Egypt.

The same principles operate within us. Each one of us has a holy Neshamah, the soul. It is part of the essence of God within us. If we value our soul as we should, placing our faith in it, in the God within, realizing it has so much to teach us and doing all we can to enhance its actions, through our practice of Torah and mitzvot, we can move out of our inner exile and reclaim our redemption.

Material for this podcast taken from Igeret HaSulam Letter 12

When we read about brothers in the Torah, we find that the concept of brotherhood as we understand it today, took much time and difficulty to emerge.

The first brothers we know about are Cain and Abel, and the story of their brotherhood is a tragic one .

Then the Torah relates the stories of Abraham and his family, and the first set of brothers we have are Yitshak and YIshmael. Yitzhak carries on the tradition of Abraham, but  Yishmael separates, goes his own way  and forms a separate nation.

A similar division takes place between the children of Yitzhak : Yaakov and Esau. Yaakov remains in the framework of holiness, carrying on the tradition of his fathers,  but Esau again goes his own way, and from him comes other nations.

 We learn in the Zohar that all the individuals mentioned are, in fact, aspects of the yetzer hatov, the good inclination and the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, as they appear as different elements within our psyche.  Avraham Yitzhak and Yaakov embody elements of the framework of holiness, whereas, Yishmael and Esau represent the framework of evil within us.

Now we can see why in each pair of brothers there was distance and separation. The causes of separation between the brothers of each pair are the same issues that we struggle within ourselves: the difference between the desires of the soul, the yetzer hatov which wishes to be in dvekut, unity with God, and the desires of the body, the yetzer hara which wants to receive self-gratification.  

But in the family of Jacob, the situation is different. Jacob begets twelve brothers, who become the twelve tribes of Israel; brothers, whose names are destined to be inscribed on the breastplate of the Kohen Gadol, the  high priest in the Temple. All of them are destined to serve God i. So, at a superficial glance, brotherhood should have been straightforward and easy. But, as we find in the parshiot of the Torah that tell of the relationship between Joseph and his brothers, it was anything but.

The Kabbalah, as taught by Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag, teaches us, that no light can be attained without the appropriate vessel for it. What is a vessel? A vessel is a desire. Therefore, in order to attain brotherhood, the Children of Israel first had to lose it. Only then would they be able to value brotherhood and desire it, ultimately understanding that brotherhood is a prerequisite for redemption.

The issue seems to have been that since the brothers had no role model for brotherhood, they didn’t know they needed it. They were careless of it, and all sides acted in ways that showed it was not something they considered as important. The story of Joseph and the brothers opens with the Joseph acting badly toward the brothers, and they, on their part, hating Joseph. The defining moment when brotherhood is lost, is the selling of Joseph as a slave to Egypt. And then all sides have to live with the dreadful knowledge of where their actions have led .

The moment when, convinced of his brothers’ complete Teshuva, repentance, Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, is seen in the Zohar as a moment of redemption. The vessel for brotherhood had finally been made, and the moment of redemption filled it with light.

Finally , the concept of brotherhood widened, not only to relate to the members of one family but to the members of one nation. It was with this brotherhood that the Children of Israel started the exile in Egypt, and it was this they needed to invoke in order to stand at Mount Sinai as “one man with one heart.”

We await the time, when all humanity will unite in brotherhood, at the end of the tikkun ,

“When the glory of God will be revealed and all flesh shall see together that the mouth of God has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:5)

 

In Genesis Chapter 12, the Torah relates:

“And there was a famine in the land, and Abram descended to Egypt to sojourn there because the famine was severe in the land.”

Genesis 12:10

What sort of famine are we talking about? If we take the Torah in its literal sense, then we mean that not enough rain fell or for some other reason the crops did not grow and there was not enough for people to eat. But the sages of the Zohar, understand the famine to have been a famine for the light of God. As the prophet Amos says , “Behold,  there will be days coming says the Lord when I will send a famine in the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water , but a famine to hear the words of God.” (Amos  8:11)

Abraham is the point of lovingkindness, chesed , within our hearts, this aspect is wanting to give unconditionally. But it has have something to work on. This is what is hinted at in the story. What is Egypt? Egypt is the consciousness of receiving for oneself alone. Egypt symbolizes a consciousness within us which is concerned with receiving everything that God can give, both materially and spiritually only for oneself alone —the height of egoism.

However ,the Zohar teaches, that at the time of the sin of Adam, holy sparks fell into the klipot, the shells. In other words, even within the consciousness of our wills to receive ourselves alone, there is a spark of holiness hidden which needs to be rescued from the framework of evil and brought into the framework of holiness.

So Abram , which is the point of chesed, of lovingkindness within us sometimes needs to connect with the will to receive for oneself alone, our egoism within us , but not to settle in that consciousness , only to take what we need, which are the desires for the light of God which are exhibited specifically in the will to receive for oneself alone, . Because our service of God needs to be complete with both the vessels of giving and the vessels of receiving . The right-hand line and the left-hand line . Abram is the carrier for the right-hand line the vessels for giving within us .

But this visit to the ” other side” requires precautions. Otherwise we can fall into the hands of the Egyptians within us, and these desires of the ego can “kill” our desires of giving unconditionally.

What precautions does Avram take and what can we learn from his actions?

The answers are found in the podcast. Happy listening!

Taken form the Zohar and the writings of Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Gottleib Shlita, of Birkat Shalom

This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us.

The story of the two brothers Cain and Abel is written in Genesis.

This is what it says:

“And Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruits of the land, whereas Able brought from the firstborn of his flock and from their fat. And God paid attention to Abel and to his offering, but to Cain and his offering he paid no attention. “  

Genesis chapter 4

And we all know the tragic ending.

Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag, the great master Kabbalist, relates to the stories in the Torah as depicting elements that are within ourselves. This comes from the fact that every single human being is an entire world in himself or in herself. Therefore everything that is happening outside in the world is also happening within ourselves.

The Cain within us is the human intelligence which a person can use in order to try to acquire revelations of the light of God. as Eve said’ With this man I have acquired God, and she called his name Cain, which means acquisition. Cain knows that he can only receive the light of God if he occupies himself by giving, so he humbles himself and offers to God the fruits of the ground , “the ground” representing his outward humility. But he is really deceiving himself, because his desire is really to receive. God pays no heed to this offering . The desire to receive in spirituality is the largest of the desires to receive for ourselves alone.

But we also have the element of Abel within us. The word Abel signifies the heart. Abel wants with all his heart to give unconditionally to God even if the offering is small. As we try to give unconditionally we discover our true egoistic nature. So the Abel within us goes in and out of the framework of holiness. Abel is represented by a shepherd, he gathers up his little lambs of faith. As we stumble all we can do is offer our first steps in faith that God will forgive us and help us come toward Him.. This is the offering that God heeds and thus the Abel within us helps us to feel blessed.

The Cain within us can never really be happy because it is always looking to see what God owes him for his work, whereas the Able within us is happy and feels privileged , no matter how small the offering is.

This podcast is taken from the book HaShem Mamati Shimecha, Vol 3 Pnai Moshe.

This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us.

The Nature of Creation

This last Shabbat we started reading the Torah again from the beginning, starting with the word Bereishit.

This word is one of the most discussed words in the Zohar because it contains both the beginning and the ultimate finish of creation.   It contains within itself the sodot, the inner meanings of the origin of creation,   the sodot of the nature of creation, and the sodot of creation’s ultimate destiny.

In this short piece let us consider one aspect only:  the word bara ברא that is found within the word bereishit בראשית . The word bara ברא  means creation. Creation implies something new, something that was not present in reality before it came into being. What can that be?

The holy Ari teaches us that prior to creation, reality is entirely filled with the limitless light of God, His goodness.  Since this goodness contains all that is, the only new creation that can possibly be, is a state of emptiness.

So creation implies emptiness. It describes a state of consciousness in which we are outside of the consciousness of light. It is a state of longing, a state of being incomplete.  If our natural state is one of being filled with light, then the state of creation is therefore an unnatural one. Indeed, this is how we experience it. We all experience periods in our lives of dissatisfaction, of loneliness, of alienation; episodes when we ask, “What is my life about?”  Sometimes these states of consciousness are short-lived, but sometimes these feelings of emptiness and of longing seem to characterize most of our lives. We sometimes try to deny these times, to fill them up with something to distract ourselves from our unease. But this is because we do not realize their potential. By understanding the word bara ברא    we discover that this essential emptiness is actually the essence of creation. We need to harness the power of creation that is inherent in these difficult times.

We tend to think that if only the emptiness will be assuaged and fulfilled we will feel satisfaction. But since the moment of Tzimtzum, when the vessel of the Ein Sof, the Infinite, decided it preferred to be a giver rather than a receiver, when it decided it wanted to acquire even more affinity of form with the Creator, our work has changed.  Instead of longing to fill the void by looking for the light, our task is now to change the nature of the vessel itself— to rectify the creation, no less.  When we feel lonely or sad, our job is therefore not to distract ourselves, but to change the desire: Instead of focusing on the emptiness, we work to find fulfilment in another way, through the desire to give to God and to each other in faith.  This corrects creation by changing the direction of desire from that of receiving to a desire of attaining affinity of form, unity, with the Creator.  The Sages of the Zohar assure us that this rectification of Creation will eventually bring the vessel to a higher level of consciousness than it had when it started as a passive receiver in the Ein Sof, eventually attaining conscious partnership with the Creator.

So to help us with this rectification of creation , the Creator gave us three more letters  in the word ברא-שית. The word  שית  means six and refers to the six lower Sephirot: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod  which correspond to the six days of creation.   It is in the six days of the week that we are asked to do all our work. This is the work we need do in the world  the rectification of creation. This we do through our fulfillment of the mitzvot of the Torah. The mitzvot  are given to us to teach us how to rectify the creation in practice.  They teach us to refrain from acts that are entirely self –serving; these are the 365 negative mitzvot, the “ don’t do’s, and they show us which actions we can do to perform the 248 positive commands  with love and joy of service.  

The Mitzvot therefore give us the means by which we may refrain from indulging in the feelings of sadness and loneliness of unfulfilled desires of receiving, but concentrate instead on our faith in God that He is good and does good and that all that happens is according to His will.

And then comes the Shabbat.

“Now the heavens and the earth were finished and all their host.

And God finished His work  on the seventh day that He did, and He stopped on the seventh day all the work that He did.

And God blessed the seventh day and He hallowed it, for on it He ceased all His work that God created to do.”

( Genesis 2:1)

So here we have the essence of Shabbat, the fulfilment of Creation, wherein the original thought of creation in which God wants to give joy to the created beings is fulfilled.   Just as the Malchut is the final Sephirah, which comes out following the six Sephirot: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, and Yesod, so does the Shabbat whose essence is the Malchut, follow our work of the six days in which we did what we could to correct the desire of receiving to giving. So on the Shabbat, our receiving is only for the sake of giving pleasure to the Creator in joy, in just the same way as it will be in the end of the Tikkun, when we will rest in the fulfillment of the joy and conscious partnership with God on the ultimate seventh day, the Shabbat.

This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us.

How did the Children of Israel reach the incredible spiritual state of “As one Man with one heart,” that enabled them to receive the Torah on Mount Sinai. If we were able to reach that same state, would we be able to stand at our own Mount Sinai and hear the voice of God speaking directly to us? Rabbi Ashlag assures us that the answer to this question is “Yes!”