Rav Daniel Kohn הרב דניאל כהן

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.]

רדיאל - פסח תשפב - שתי הגדות.MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn

רדניאל - פרשת השבוע תשפב - תזריע ופרשת החודש - דבר הגון ולא הגון.MP3 by Rav Daniel Kohn

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."

1. 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.

1. 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.

Our weekly class on the Maharal's Netiv HaTorah is currently delving into the nature of love of Torah. This class, given erev Purim, opened a new understanding in Purim's contribution to consciousness, love and the creative powers we're invited to express.

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.