Rav Daniel Kohn הרב דניאל כהן

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Episode Transcript:

Today is the yartzeit of the Alter Rebbe, the first Rebbe of Chabad, and being that he is someone I am very attached to, I want to share with you some of his writing in the contexts of what we've been learning-- which is a process of how G-d has filled out the elements of love of Him in the world through particular personalities, and viewing them through a transpersonal perspective, and seeing how the principles of love of G-d have become revealed and manifest in the world through the great teachers of it and the different aspects of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov (who then becomes Yisrael) and very particular attention we paid to the nature of the relationships of Yaakov to Rachel and Yisrael to Leah…

                And last time we were in exploration in the particular way in which Leah has come to her own and became the mother of the malchut, of Yehudah, who in a process in which he became very aware of her particular and special gift, and how she knew, and named her subsequent children accordingly, she knew to take that to the right place, by virtue of both giving up on the insistance of it being for her, which became revealed through the way she…became very aware of it not being about her-- we didn't explore this much  but she actually learned that from Rachel, perhaps we can go back to that … this principle of resignation, but not in the negative sense of it, but rather through the realization that it's not about her, and her revelation of her particular gift that is hers, is meant to come into the world dafka sometimes by letting go. And that kind of letting go is something which then achieved for her and accessed for her a different level of malchut, which is the ability to apply herself, or the machut's ability to apply herself in the world in any of the myriad and infinite circumstances and inerconnections and inter-relationships that come up by virtue of what happens.

                I'll tell you what I mean in simple terms. A person who's discovered their special gift and then becomes closed in by it, and that can happen--it's all about me--the expression of it through me, everything then becomes servant for me, and the manifestation of what is me? all becomes quite disgusting, when people get there and they turn into these monstrous controllers of circumstances, of people, of realities in order that the me that they have discovered be able to become fully realized and fully manifest. These people strut around the world as if they are owners of the planet and controllers of other people, and really put themselves into reality from a position of it's what I have achieved, what I am meant to achieve, what I know my reality to be, and everything is here to serve it. That kind of a personal reality is extremely stagnated, domineering, and the opposite of what malchut is meant to be.

                Because the reality that Leah births, through Yissaschar, is entirely different, it's the reality of knowing my special gift, and that gift is in full participation with the entire planet, and the circumstances and realities that I come across and face at every moment are there, not for me to control so that they can fit into some preconceived notion of what they have to be and what I've decided that I am and what will serve me, but it's the opposite. It's total surprise. Life is always taking you for a surprise. The things that come up and happen are not meant for you to control at all, but rather they are meant for you to be drawing from in order that the realization and the fullness of what your special reality is be able to come to expression in the fullest way. Sometimes even without it coming to realization without it being through you specifically.

                And this is so crucial to know, as we saw that one of the great teachers of this is Hillel the Zakeyn, who is the same man who teaches us that the clal gadol b'Torah--that the great principal of the Torah--v'ahavta l'reecha c'mocha--is that you shall love your fellow as yourself.

                And Hillel Hazakeyn is standing in the Beit HaMikdash in full joy at the Simchat Beit Shoevah… and he's saying the most spiritually horrifying thing --or one would take it that way if they had the wrong perspective and that is I'm ani kan hakol kan, if I am here, than everything is here. But what does that mean? If I am here everything is here sounds like it could mean, if I am here, nothing else matters. The only thing I care about is me and I'm here. So, everything is here. That would be a way to read Hillel's statement. But knowing that Hillel the Zakeyn is the man of v'ahavta l're'echa c'mocha, actually to listen to him carefully will give the opposite voice. Not that I am here and everything is here doesn't mean that I am here and nothing else matters, because if I'm here than everything that needs to be here is here, but the opposite. If I'm really here, I am present, then everything is here. Because when there is the person who is fully present to the reality of who they really are, and their ani, their selfhood, is clear, pronounced and expressed and joyous--we'll see how crucial that element of being joyous is--then that whole reality sings along with you, because it's all here with you at that moment and this is built upon a principal that we'll be B"H learning about today which is has to do with interconnectivity which is crucial for us to see.

                So that I want to point out the root of that comes with Leah in her giving up, and Hillel indeed was one of the nasim of the Jewish people, a descendant of David HaMelech, so it's important to take a greater look at him as we look into greater clarity as to what David HaMelech is about and what the malchut is about. Because that's really what we've been working on ever since we've been exploring Leah, especially through hodaya, her realization of joyous thankfulness that she brought to the world on the birth of yehudah, who is, of course, the malchut. Yehudah comes with these two other children, because in the machaneh, in the midbar, Yehudah who stands on the east side, which is our forward in our four directions, Yehudah has to his right, Yissaschar, and he has to his left, Zevulun. And these are the elements that make right malchut. It's not like Yissaschar and Zevulun belong to some other camp. They exactly belong with malchut.

                So when you go back to Hillel dancing there in the Beit HaMikash, in the joyous Simchat Beit Shoevah, and he's the child of David HaMelech, so we're going to see some very profound things that have to do with the elements of Yehudah and the elements of malchut especially as they relate to love, because it's Hillel HaZakeyn, and it's v'ahavta l'reacha c'mcocha, so when he says, ani kan v'kol kan, I believe he's coming from the realization of selfhood that knows that there is no way that anything in the world could be left out of the full realization of my selfhood, and the reason for that is very clear, because the entire world exists by virtue of the interconnectivity of all of its elements. You cannot ever exist as some independent, atomic particle which is not in relation to everything else.

                Now they talk about in physics about the butterfly effect, or the chaos principles or all kinds of aspects of reality which now even as I'm moving my hand here better be careful, because I might be setting off some kind of tycoon ("typhoon" --DG) in Malaysia or something and that's the truth, the incredible interconnectness of things means that but it also means that there's nothing in reality that's really irrelevant with the nature of who you really are if you're in tune with who you are. If you're missing it, so then your environment is smaller and smaller,  but if you're really fully expressing what the world is meant to be expressing through you, well, the world is really meant to be expressing it through you and you're not alone. That’s one of the most beautiful realizations, is that you're never alone, when you're alone, when you're really alone  because when you're really alone, meaning, when you become really unique, and really purposeful, really on target, on the mark, this was the deep teaching about Yaakov being left alone.

                The lvado of Yaakov, where G-d was willing to say, or he was willing to say, ani eloka batachtonim, which Rashi told us, and according to the Ramban, that the Shechinah lives in Eretz Yisrael. Meaning that the Shechinah lives in the place which, by its nature, is connected to the entire planet because it is the place that the entire planet began from. It is the place in that first relationship with G-d, and so, when he is fully realized into that, then he is touching everything. The Malchut expresses that from the vantage point of me. Very aware of himself being there, im ani kan hakol kan, it can't be that there'd be anything that's left out of this great moment of me being here in full joy. Again, as we'll see the element of joy is crucial. I believe of that aspect of the malchut of I'm connected to all and it's not about me, comes as born through Leah's resignation and giving up, coming through her body and sending in a shifcha, which we saw, she declares, it's true Yaakov that I hired you, sachor scharitcha for the dudaim, but I want to tell you something, this child who is called Yisasschar, was born not because I bought you, but because I dafka gave you up as the one who would sleep with me in this personal and specific embodied manifestation. I gave you up for the higher purpose in which we're both joined together, which is bringing in the shvatim, bringing these children into the world, aym ha banim smaycha, joyous even in the sense, when the child comes through some other body, joyous in that. She's attached to that, that's her true and deep attachments, as the mother of the children.

                And so in giving up Yaakov, ironically, she buys him to sleep with him that night, but in buying him, she achieves the sachar, the reward, which is is only achievable for those who are willing to give it up for their particular and specific manifestation. And that rewrad is the reward of a child who will then become the paradigm for a Talmid chacham. 

                You see, Yissachar, the pasuk in Divrei Yamim says, that benei Yissachar, (14:44) yodeh binah l'iteem. The children of Yissachar are the ones who know binah in its timeliness. They know exactly what's to come in time. They were big talmidei chachmim. And the specific aspect they had was yodei binah, which is, of course, Leah, the aym habanim smecha. The power to creatively and joyously bring new realities into the world, l'iti, according to the right time. And this is so crucial. That's a specific pasuk in Divrei Ha yamim. I don't have the perek, I'm sorry. In Chronicles. They were big as rashei sanhedrin, there were two hundred of them, from that tribe, that tribe was big. And the specific aspect of Talmid Chachamim that they had was yadei binah, which is of course Leah, the aym ha banim smechah, the power to creatively and joyously bring new realities into the world, l'itim. at the right time. Because a real talmid chacham will always speak the voice of the present. They are the only ones who can really poskin halachah and teach Torah. They're the ones who know what the times, so to speak, call for. And that's because they have resigned their previous preceptions and preconceived notions and insistance on coming through me as I have formed myself and as I know myself to have become, and they are able to live with the openness to what reality is bringing, what this present moment in life is calling forth, and only those of that profound sense of the mutual nature of creative expression, meaning: it's not me and my teaching, nor is it a reality that is solidified and become standardized and set, but there is something that is born between the contact of the two of us, which is a mutual creation by virtue of the interrelationship between us. That's true Torah she b'al eh, which is not one or the other; it's the most beautiful relationship between G-d's revealed word and the meaning of the time and the moment and the particular personhood of the talmid chacham who speaking it.

                That's what it is, Like it or not. You won't like it if what you're looking for is the set-in-stone absolute truths. You won't like it if you're afraid of changes in dynamic which means that it's not absolute. But you'll love it if what you're in love with is relationship. Because that means it's always being made anew and fresh at every moment. So the people who become the greatest talmidei chachmim are the ones who are descended from Leah's being resigned about it being from her particular body. And then that sachar comes, being first and foremost the great teachers of Torah, but the truth is, more deeply, being the very possibility of being sachar and reward. In the true spiritual sense, where I'm not getting the reward for this particular form that I'm formed in but I'm participating in divine reward, which means it's beyond the particular boundaries of myself.

                Here's something from a student of the Admor HaZakeyn's son. The great pleasure of sachar, of reward, when it comes to the physical life, so the more body-bound you become, and the more particular that you become, so the more pleasure there is in the reward. But when it comes to spiritual rewards it's exactly the opposite. The less you are attached to and insisting upon your own particular boundaries, so the more you can experience the joy and the pleasure of G-d's presence, and it's ironic, because He wants you in your specificity. But He only wants us in our specificity, inasmuch as we recognize that it's not about us.  That we are giving it up to He who is greater than us, then the pleasure is very great. That's the yesh sachar, Yissaschar, and it comes down again into how these people interact with reality.

                Here's a story about someone named Shimon Hamsuni. Had a chop--he realized something. What he realized was that every time that it says et in the Torah, that it comes to include something else. Bereshit barah elokim, et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz. Must be coming to include something else, kol et she b'torah he darshaned, What does the et mean? He built up a whole insitute, he was there with talmidim, and they were darshaning every et in the Torah and they had this wild Guinness thing going, and they get to a pasuk--et Hashem elokecha, Tirah, you are to stand in fear of G-d, you are completely batel to G-d, which ultimately is an experience of that there is nothing else but G-d, completely abnegated before Him that is ultimate and complete and perfect fear. Not fear in the sense of being afraid, but in the sense of utter awe. So they get to the pasuk and they can't figure out what to do with that. Along with G-d, you should also fear what? You are going to compare something with G-d, especially when it comes to tirah, when you should be completely abnegated before G-d, now what do we do? So they get revved up, what are you going to do? Nobody's got anything, so he gets up in front of his tzibur, and he says, k'shem shkibalti schar al ha drishot, kach kibalti schar al hadrisha. (22:38) The way I received sachar for my darshaning all these, in the same way now, I receive sahcar from my absolving and my pulling back from darshaning. Meaning, okay, it didn't work out. It means, he's let go of the pre-conceived reality that he's built of what his life is about and what it's for. He's hit something now. Everything would have turned into a lie, if he can't darshan this one, like the whole thing is gone. Well, if it's about me getting my thing out into the world, then man, he's going to fight hard, but if it's about me and my devotion and love of G-d, and whatever He brings me is the reflection and the dynamic interraction that I'm meant to have now, that calls me forth, what is being called forth now, and what is always being called forth. It wasn't me and my mosdos, my institutions, me and my expressions, me and my word that I'm coming about, no, it wasn't about that. It was about me and my devotion to truth, to G-d, and so, the same sachar, that I got for all the great drashas that I made, I get for this. It's really the same thing.

                So then the Gemara goes on and says, until Rebbe Akiva came along, and he said….et Hashem elokecha tira, lrabo talmidei chachamim. Et Hashem elokecha tira comes to include talmidei chachmim. Hey, where was Rebbe Akiva until now? How come he didn't speak up? You know what happened? When he saw Hamsuni, he saw it would be possible that there would be someone who lives the presence of G-d so much that it is a reality which is formed by the nature of the relationship that he has with G-d and the truths that now become revealed by the dynamic of his interaction with G-d's being, with G-d's teaching. It was like, Hamsuni became the revelation of the one who was, so to speak, godlike in his not being about his small self, but his being about the revelation of the truth of all. Not about my particular project. But if it's the truth that's meant to come through right now, like the et thing doesn't work, okay, that's a different kind of a personality, it's surrender to the greater being of G-d, Who continues to speak through me, but not necessarily in a way that I expected. Ah, that's Rabbi Akiva, that's a talmid chacham. That's a ben Yissachar.

                I personally long for talmidei chachamim like that who are real in that. Because so much today is about… rebuilding what was, or holding on to the world we once knew… Yeshivas get named for European [towns?] that have long been destroyed as if somehow we're doing them a favor by continuing to do what they did. When the honest truth is, no one's really doing what they did anymore. Maybe they're not doing what they did, it's not even true, but somehow people think the comfort in their thinking that they do. But that comfort in thinking you're doing what they did, also stifles your ability to be l'itim, to be those who know the times and live them in a full connectivity to what is right now. It's as if those people--and excuse me for holding forth on this--,it's almost if they've given up on G-d, as if G-d stopped producing sometime, it's no longer the bechina of aym habanim smecha it's all about shorring up, holding on, lhitchazek, be strong, we'll make it through, okay, it's true, we have to be strong because there's a lot of lies in the world, but if all you are is being mitchazak, if all you are is being strong, you're going to miss all the truths too, which are meant to be born in this moment. Those are the true talmidei chachamim, those who so to speak resigned their bodies, and resigned their attempt to just be comfortable with and shorr up what they already know and what has already been.

                See, I believe this is what is meant by a dirah batachtonim, making a dwelling place for G-d in the lower worlds. Everything that my great teacher, the Baal Hatanya teaches about how that's coming to know the unity in life and the unity of all that is, and seeing G-d's presence in all of reality and knowing that it's all Him. It's all true about dirah batachtonim, but there is another aspect of dirah batachtonim and that is that we're home together, so to speak. What I mean by that is, you can have two parents and have a great relationship between them, but there's something else, that is called the home. The home isn't one or the other person, and if you particle it out into all the different children and the two parents and the pet dog and the chairs and the tables and, if you particle it all out, so it's not a home, it's not a bayit. That's all the different pieces of a picture, but only when they've been joined together does the picture emerge. And the picture that emerges is a home. It is one of the best examples of what we mean when we talk about a malchut. It's a picture which is not the particular pieces, but it's a whole, and by virtue of the interconnectness between them produce something that is not the particluar specifics of the picture.

                It's like looking at a picture. And in fact, one of the names for malchut in the Kabbalah is temunah, a picture. A picture is not a picture once you stop picking apart the different elements that are in it. It stops being a picture. Like, this chair, if I starting taking apart all the pieces of the chair, there wouldn't be any chair left. I'd still have all the parts of the chair are still here, right? Here they are on the floor, it's collapsed. But where did the chair go? It's all right there. Put it on the scale, you'll see it, it's got exactly the same weight it did when you were sitting on it. Where did the chair go? Well, we'll put it back together, you'll have the chiar again. What did you add? We didn't add anything at all. Nothing at all. Except one thing. Connectedness. Which now makes a picture.

                That's the way Torah shb'al peh is also. Connectedness, which now makes a picture. It's not G-d's teaching or my teaching There's a consciousness of mine and of what G-d is teaching that have met at a particular moment of an everchanging reality and that's the bayit right now, that's the dirah batachtonim. He is mamash living here, He is the dirah batachtonim. How? With us. When we have the consciousness of the talmid chacham who, the Rabbis say, …who are the real kings? They have the talmidei chachamim, but in the true sense. About who those people are. That's because they are true beni chorim, truly liberated. Actually live a holy reality. That's what it means in Hebrew. Bnei chorim. Hor, that's whole, Beni chorin is liberated people.  H-o-l-l-y, or however you spell it, I guess. H-o-l-e-y? (No, h-o-l-y) When you're full of holes too, the reason why the bnei chorin are holey, is because they are always seeing reality as an endless series of opportunities for the expression of what G-d has gifted them with. Always with the conception and the knowing that this is not about me expressing what I've been gifted with, but this is about bringing the realization of the planet to its fullness, which is the will of G-d, we're building this together, G-d, and we can really do that by being open to what the ate is, what is this particular time is right now. Those are the talmidei chachmim who come from the Yisasschar, the kings, that's the malchut, that's making a dirah batachtomin. That's why, by the way, the name Zevulun means, we've made a beit dirah, and that Leah's final gift, so to speak, to the children of Yaakov, and her final gift to the building of malchut, Zevulun, who will now stand on the left side of Yehudah in the camp. It's a bayit. It's a dirah batachtonim for you G-d . That's what my life is. That is full love. Because I'm not giving up a particular refraction that the selfhood that you've given me brings and (starting to speak with more passion) I'm certainly not giving you up. I'm knowing that it's You refracting through me. I'm knowing that what's happening right now and is going on right now is something which is really here, that it wouldn't be right to talk about me or You it's just what is in the fullness of that.

                The most amazing thing is that the word makom, in the gematria of yud times yud and heh times heh and vav times vav and heh times heh equals the gematria of makom, of place. It's like when the two sides meet. The havaha in you and the havaha coming from G-d meet and form this place. That's the dirah batachtonim that G-d is longing for. And it can only come from a true unity consciousness.    All the levels of the consciousness that we've been through from Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov, can only come about by virtue of all of those elements being present within in, to allow you to be here in a way which is b'tikkun and not a violation of the knowing of His oneness.  But rather about a realization of the one G-d where all of reality are participant in His being, ki v'yachol, (37:22) to manifestation.

                So Leah says a most amazing thing when she calls Zevulun, Zevulun. She says, G-d has given me zeh vtov, he gave me a good chelek. So I'm going to call him Zevulun. Why didn't you call him Zvudun, besides the fact that it's hard to pronounce. It sounds like voodoo. The point is, her chelek is what she's grateful for. That's her hodaya. But now she's come through Yissaschar, so it produces a beit dirah, a home, a malchut.

                (Question: What is malchut?) Kingdom.  We're used to kingdom being a place where a king reigns, but there is a deepr aspect to kingdom which is that kingdom is when all of the different, disparate and separate parts are joined together into something which they make which is more than just themselves. So that all the parts of this chair when they are together, are a kingdom. It's an abstraction, right? When they are together, they are a kingdom. Like a personality, when it's like all over the place, is not, but when there is an organisation of the personality of, I'm pulling it all together, then the kingdom has arrived.  So the beautiful thing is, there a kingdom called knesset yisrael, which is the kingdom of us with G-d in an embrace in which we become one. And that is what we've been talking about.

                And that embrace is the very first embrace which is on top of the aron habrit. At the very beginning, if you remember, that is the source of Creation. The point on the planet which is where G-d began the creation from, the navel of the earth, which is the place of the kodesh kodashim. On that place are two keruvim, angels that are in an embrace in the Beit Hamikdash, in the Temple. Because the origin of it all is that (inaudible-41:10) in the embrace. But now what's happened, at the end of time, so to speak, or the end of the series, at David, or at the malchut, it's not so much about them being in the embrace, it's what the Baal HaTanya calls a kiss, they become the one breath. A oneness that's achieved by the breath of the two which now forms into a new word.

                That's by the way, the word malchut divides in Hebrew into milat kaf vav. The word that has the numerical value of twenty-six, which is G-d's name, yud-key-vav-hey. Besides being beautiful, it's the very expression of what the malchut is. Because the malchut is the difference between a bunch of a letters and a word. Now go pick that word apart into its pieces. Put the alef over there and the gimel over there, and put the vav over there. What do you end up with? Not a word. It's a malchut when it's a word. The way in which G-d creates which is by forming the words which reality draws from, is in itself an expression of what the nature of reality is. Which is none of this can exist of its connection in relationship with everything else.  That's why He creates with words. The word itself is an expression of what the nature of our connectivity is, that's the grounding of it. It's connectivity. It's all malchut. And when we speak G-d's word in our lives, in our deeds and thoughts, and especially in our deeds,. 

                So take a look here at this piece from the Tanya, chapter thirty-five. …I want to explain to you what G-d said in the Chumash that here, I've given you this Torah, which is very near you,… in your mouth and in your heart to do it. So he talks a lot in this book about in your mouth, and he talks about in your heart, but what's the doing it? I also want to tell you about something called , as he says, people who are beinoni. These are people who are in a constant struggle and fight and never fully achieve the overcoming of their other side, their yetzer harah, and they might think that they are living in a world that is empty of success, and they might even be despairing of achieving what it is they're going for, which is some kind of purity that their soul is yearning for, and everytime, every day it seems like they're starting again. Pick yourself up, get yourself happy, deal with it, and another yetzer, oh yeah, I blew it, I did it again, I spoke lashon harah, … what's going on? I thought I was beyond this. No, the beinoni is all the time being knocked back, knocked down, struggling, and he would have a sense that it's all… empty effort. So I want to tell you something, he says, … let this be their consolation… and give them great joy in G-d who is dwelling with them in their Torah and in their avodah. And it comes from a teaching in the Zohar. A wise man, his eyes are in his head. So the Zohar says, big deal? The stupid people have eyes in their feet? Of course the wise man has eyes in his head. Where are the eyes of a person? No, no, I'll tell you. I'm actually teaching you a pasuk. That it says, that a man, a human being, always has the Shechinah over his head, and a wise man keeps his eyes on the Shechinah. Because there is a flame which is burning over the head of each one of us, and it needs oil to keep burning. Your body, that's a wick. And the flame over your head, that's the Shechinah. And Shlomo the King said, … Don't ever run out of oil on your head, because the light on your head will go out if you don't continue to feed it oil . And what is the oil of the light on your head? Those are the good deeds you do on this earth. And so it says, the wise man keeps his eyes on his head. So I'll tell you what this means, he says. This is a parable. The parable is that the light is the Shechinah and it's compared to a candle light which can only continue to burn as long as it's burning out from the body of the wick that it's attached to. As soon as it would disconnect from the wick, it would go out. As soon as there would be no oil in the wick, it would burn it and become extinguished. So, too, the Shechinah can only dwell on the body of a person who is, of course, compared to the wick. And how? Only by feeding the flame through his ma'asim tovim, by his good acts. Dafka.

                I want to tell you something. He says, it's not enough the meditation, which he says in his book. It's not enough that in his neshama that he knows that he's a part of G-d and he experiences that in his meditation. Because at the end of the day, as big a tzaddik as you might become, and as much as you might be serving G-d with love and awe which is the most pleasurable experience which a human being can possibly touch, nevertheless, you can never become completely batel in His reality to become completely at one and absorbed into the light of G-d mamash, to become at one and fully unified and in communion with Him, in a perfect and utter communion, because you always remain something. You are the one who is fearing and loving Him. Then who would be fearing and loving Him if you were completely at one with Him? That also would be an extinguishing of the Shechinah. Because the Shechinah is the reality which is formed by the virtue of the kiss that is between us and Him, the reality of our being together. …As opposed to a mitzvah or ma'asim tovim, the mitzvot and the good deeds, that are the accomplishment of His will. And His will, that's the source of life of all the worlds that are created.

                Now all these worlds came about by virtue of G-d's having contracted His light, of his having hid His face, of this higher presence in infinite presence of Him so that they could be created, something from nothing, experiencing themselves as being different from Him by being rewarded a consciousness which blocks seeing Him and which allows you to see things as being separate entities, such that things would lose their reality and would be able to be extent as separate existences. So that's how we got to this world.

                Now let me tell you something. This is so important: the depth of the connection to Him is deep when one does one little act, one little deed on this planet.   Because then, in a meditative condition of full and complete communion with Him,  you may be experiencing a pleasure of being in full and complete communion with Him, but you're not in full and complete communion with Him, because if you were, you wouldn't be experiencing being in full and complete union with Him. And then if you let go of that, then you're gone. But He's wanting you to be here. That would be a violation of His wanting you here. So you're going to lose yourself?

                So, as he explained to us, as big a tzaddik you are and as profound person you live in the comtemplation of your soul in the presence of G-d and the greatness of G-d, and the great exhiliarated ecstasy that might come with that, that is not ultimate connection. Dafka, the connection that can be experienced far more deeply is by doing one small act which is an expression of His desire. See how he explains it: The mitzvot, that's the depth of his desire. He doesn't have to hide his face there. The life force that's in doing His will, that's not something other than Him, that's Him. Which now you're aligned with and you're participating with the manifestation of bringing into expression of. It's completely at one with Him. And then in that act, you become completely at one with Him. In there and in that act.

                It might sound funny. I've been married twenty-five years. By the way, I was really guided. My wife's birthday is today, the Alter Rebbe's yarzeit. Something going on there, huh? I want to tell you something, I'll try to keep it clean. But I can tell you, as much as we might think together, as much as we might talk together, or tell each other how much we love each other, as much as we touch, as much as there is all of that, there is nothing as great as one act which we do together as an expression of a joined will. And you know, it may even be taking out the garbage. That's a deep thing taking out the garbage. That really is. This is a joke, but Zevulun also means the garbage dump.  That's the truth, The garbage dump, this world. Putting that aside. Because like, how much could I tell her that I love her? How many words would I be able to say? How many songs could I sing? As soon as I stop, it's going to become like, is that all? Because it's infinite and ongoing. It's not something you can describe. We say to G-d, dor l'dor yishabach ma'asecha, from generation to generation. Which, by the way, is dwell and dwell, dor l'dor, dirah to dirah, generation to generation, we keep saying it and we keep saying it. How much could we possibly say it? When are you going to stop saying it?

                But you know what you can do with someone that you love? What happens when you just give a kiss? Have you said it all? You know what? You said it all. You know why? Because it's all right there in that moment and in that act. You think you're going to start spelling it out? Okay, good luck. What did you mean by that kiss, honey? Could you explain that to me? I'll try, but I think it might take me twenty-five years and more. It's every moment of our lives, it's everything that we're here for, it's everything in our connectedness that was in that. It's where our love for each other joined and merged into one and when it's with G-d, it's when His will became manifest through me and I gave it to Him through my act, that one touch, which is called a mitzvah.

                I've been teaching this book and the Tanya really is a manual for meditation for those of you who have been looking for it.  Here it is, of Jewish Meditation, he tells us here in perek lamed heeh, it's big and it's crucial. And it is because, you wouldn't want to kiss a person mindlessly, and so be fully connected and real with it. But the only thing that ever could possibly express in a way that you become one with is yishakeni mnishikut pihu. Kiss me from the kisses of your mouth, which is what knesset yisrael says to G-d. Ki tovim dodecha m'yayinn, because your love is greater than the wine of your written torah, and Chazal learn that verse as oral torah, that's the kiss of your mouth, that's what we're making together, that's the acts that we realize are meant to be done now, and ultimately by the doing of them. It's in the mind, and it becomes most profoundly in the deed. That's why dodecha, which means "your lovings" is the same letters as David, which is your lovings. Because David is the end point, the malchut, and David is also the deed.

(1:00:52) "V'ineh…" So the Scheninah, which is the revelation of his divinity, and the light of the infinite one, v'ezeh davar…it's in one thing, that is to say, that that thing has become participant in the light of G-d, batel in his body, that's why he has his dirah in the tachtonim, by that which is not completely given over to him. The light of G-d does not dwell upon it. And even the Tzaddik gamur is completely cleaving to G-d with a great love, and intense love, well, ultimately, his meditation, his thought cannot hold him, because the truth of G-d is that He is the full truth and His unity of being alone is that there is no other than Him.

                So this lover, who is still in yesh, and not known and trying to grasp Him can not, it only happens through his deed. Listen to this: Rambam tells us about David. David is deed-doer, and the end point of the dudaim, the davidaim, and it’s the end point of the dodim. Ki tovim dedecha mi yayin. And he tells us about it in the context of what happens when people are dancing in the Beit Hamikdash at the simchat beit hashoevah. Remember Hillel the Zakayn, im ani kan, hakol kan? So listen to how the Rambam describes what happens there. He says, the real people to dance there? (Laughing). The real people to dance there? The real ones dancing, they're the talmidei chachamim. They are the roshei yeshiva, the sanhedrin, chachmei yisrael, chassidim, z'keynim, anshei ma'aseh, the ones who know how to do. They are the ones who are fully dancing there. Then he goes on and says the following. He says, Let me teach you about simchah, about joy, because that's what Sukkot was. By the way, sukkah is kneged binah.  Hasimchah she yismach ha adam b'asiyat ha mitzvah, the simchah that a person has a joy with when he's doing a mitzvah, and the love of G-d who commanded it avodah g'dolah hih, that's a big avodah. That's big work. What's the big work? He's going to tell you. …. Anyone who prevents himself from this simchah deserves to have judgement executed on him. Now listen to his choice of words. Anyone who prevents himself from the mitzvah, it's appropriate that he be nichrah from him. You see, in Hebrew, it's a funny thing, you know? Pharoah, is in the kabbalah, the stand off of real malchut. Pharoah, in Hebrew, Para, means to separate, paruah, wild, and basically unconnected, priah is when two things are pulled apart. Lhiparah mimenu, this guy's like a Pharoah-type, but putting that aside, you can take that as a drash or as a true insight. Listen to the Rambam in the way he says it. You know what the big avodah in simchah is? Let me tell you. The big avodah in simchah is don't stop yourself from being happy. That's what he says. He says there's a big avodah here. In doing the mitzvah and in loving G-d. Where did the love come from? Who's talking about love? Is the Rambam getting romantic? The great thing about the Rambam is, don’t suspect him of that. The Rambam is extremely clear and precise. Why did he throw in love? The simchah of Simchat Beit Hashoevah is about dancing and joy, right? . Usmachtem b'chagecha vahitah ach sameach. Where did the Rambam pull in love from? And then he says, the G-d who commanded you to do this is a-- Excuse me, the great joy in doing the commandments that G-d has commanded you, it's a big avodah! I'll tell you what the avodah is, (1:07:33)…if you stop yourself from the simchah, then you deserve to be punished, nifrah, and cut off. That's the punishment. How do we know? The verse says so. The Chumash says in chapter twenty-eight of Devarim. You're going to be exiled from this land if you don't do G-d's work b'simcha uv'tov leva. What does that mean? To do it with joy and to do it with a good heart. A good heart. Maybe the Rambam learned love from a good heart.  Simchah and tuv levav. Simchah and love. Love is the full heart. Love is the experience of abundance of what is. Love is the connectivity of seeing the good as we've learned, and joining with it. If you cut yourself off from that, then you deserve to be cut off and you deserve to go into exile. It's all the same thing. It's like an oxymoron. Meaning, that by definition, to stop yourslef from being happy means to cut yourself off. Because when you're attached to life in fullness, you're in full joy. That's just the way it works. Want to know where to see it? Look at the children. Full of zest, full of joy. Until they start getting self-conscious and start worrying about their honor. Start worrying about the impression they're making. Or the image they're trying to project or the external realization that they are convince that they ought to be and all that stuff, man, should be/ought to/connect to life. The Rambam is saying, If you stop yourself-- that's the big avodah people. Don't be moneah yourself. Bah! Well, he tells you what it looks like. …..(1:10:13) a Person who becomes totally bloated or self-conscious or self-involved, neges daatoh. Full in his thinking…cholek kavod l'atzmo--an amazing term--and he divides out honor to himself. He's like taking his piece he's out of the ani kan hakol kan. It's my piece, it's my territory. It's what I am and what I'm supposed to be-- take me as I am. And needs to protect himself that life shouldn't just flow him Gee, if life flows through me, then where am I in all this? cholek kavod l'atzmo. Seeking for the honor of his delimited self. You know who he is?....And he's creating honor for himself in his own eyes, total self-consciousness,. He is a sinner, he is a fool. The sinner I think is kneged simchah, because choteh means he's off, missing the mark, out of alignment and shoteh is kneged love. He's a fool. Isn't there a phrase, only fools fall in love? Something like that? The truth is only fools don't. Because the fool is so caught up in what his own heart is thinking he's holding in his shrirut libo.  In the meanderance of his own inner life, that he's become disconnected from realty. Those are the people who fall out of love, the ones who disconnect from reality-- they fall out of love. That's what it means to fall out of love. That's what literally in Hebrew is shoteh. Someone who's shot. Although in English it sounds pretty good too. But in Hebrew shat means "to float above it." Like la shoot al hamayim. What is that? You're disconnected. Lost the tuv lev, the connecting heart. Ah. ….. (1:13) About this Shlomo said, don’t make yourself into big stuff in front of the king, don't bloat yourself in front of the king G-d, the real king in real kingship. The Rambam completes this by saying the following…when there's a joyous celebration of G-d's work in the world, of life, the ones who lower themselves, who lower their honor. …And forget about their body, in these times, in these places, he's the great and honored one who's worshipping G-d out of love. I'm having trouble. Love, joy, which one is it? Do you know, the simple gematria of simchah is shen echad. Or sham echad. Or sam echad. Any one of them. Het hay is the gematria of one, which  of course is the gematria of love. And that's what happens when you're really connected with life. It's joyously running through you. You're creative, you're connected, you're in, you're happy, you're feeling the fullness of all that is. You're in love. And when you're in love, that's what you experience. It didn't have to be that way. You didn't have to be happy when you're in love. But people are.

                And then he ends this whole section with--guess who? With David. B'chen David melech yisrael amar… This is what David said when he was dancing his way up to the Beit Hamikdash. He said, "I'm willing to make myself even cheap even than this." He was dancing around, it's a whole story to look at, he was kicking it up, his robe is like flying and going total berzerk. It's like, wow! Unbelievable scene going on. The king of Israel is dancing around the aron habris that's going up to the Beit Hamikdash, and he's losing it!  So then he comes home. And the whole time his wife's been watching him. And his wife is the daughter of Shaul, who's a different kind of king, whom we cannot explore right now. Her name is Michal, which is kelim. She's holding things in the vessels. She doesn't want too much light in the vessels. It's like getting out of hand. So she's watching him dancing and she comes to him and says, that's disgusting! You've done shame to all of us, dancing that way. All the shifchas can see you. Ding. Shifchas? Hmm.What's going on with all the shifchas anyway? All the shifchas can see you. I don’t know what she was thinking. But it had to do with "a little more decorum please. Your tie got disheveled, David." So, David says to her, the verse the Rambam here quotes: Don't worry about me, I'm ready to make it even worse (inaud) myself even lower than what you've seen. Then the story ends by saying, and Michal never had children. That's sad, but what's it got to do with this? It's got everything to do with this. You can't have children unless you have the child-like. It's the truth. Really, by the way of zivug, by way of kissing and connection. If you don't have the child-like, relations are called in Hebrew "to play around." Isn't that funny, that we should have children by playing around? L'sachek? What are we laughing about? Shouldn't having children be a serious matter? When peep come in with their ties and jackets, and he's with his tie and jacket and she's with, what's going on here? It's absolutely infantile. That's what it is. These peep are losing themselves. We shouldn't be losing ourselves. But children are born by couples losing themselves and playing. Imagine being overly careful. That's not the way halachah has it. All kinds of things have developed over the centuries, but that's not the way of the Talmud. They're playing aounrd. Sha'ashuah. Strange. But that's exactly it. The joy of life is expressed in that moment, and its so in the moment. And only then can a child be born. There's even a Rashi in Masechet Niddah that says--no, I'll put that one aside. So, of course she didn't have children. Nor really can Torah she b'al peh be born of anything else. If it's all stuck up, then it's not going to be real to the moment. Nor can a life with G-d be with anything else. People have it wrong. The love of G-d, this is exacly what the Rambam is describing here, it's David HaMelech dancing mfazez umfarker. He's dancing, it's beautiful in its joyousness and playful. Sha'ashuah, creative. That's not to say there's no rules, of course there are rules. That's not to say there aren't kelim. Of course there are kelim. It's just to say what mood is meant to be.            And so the Rambam has taken us mamash full circle, because Avraham is where it began, the great lover of G-d, and Daivd is where it ends, the great lover of G-d in joy. Because by Avraham it's not in joy because it's not in the world, so to speak. But in David it's in the beautiful creative act, living here, in this world with G-d, in love with Him, that it all comes to realization and expression. So the Rambam, these halachot, ends with this quote: 1:22:57, There is no greatness, and there is no honor, except to be in joy before G-d, as it says, ….vhamelech david mfazaz umfarker, lifneh Hashem. king David he was "living it up." In front of G-d.

(Questions): Sof hilchot lulav. Maytal said, what act? And there's lots of acts, mitzvot. First I want to say, Taryag, six-hundred and thirteen, which is the number of mitzvot, is the gematria of "love connection" Tav Reish, six-hundred is kesher, yud gimel, is thirteen, love. Love connection. And it's also one connection. Putting that aside. The Rambam writes, and not everyone agrees with the Rambam. In this the Maharal takes very strong issue with him and I've got to be careful today because the Maharal is the great-great-grandfather of the Baal ha Tanya. But the Rambam says, the reason why there are so many mitzvot, is just so you can get just one right. (Laughter) You don't have to say that, but it's interesting in the context of what we've been learning today.

                But between us, I don't think it's quite that way. Life is long. Circumstances shift. There's all kinds of possibilities that life is offering and it's not just so to speak, taking the garbage out. There are many other things that we do for each other that are these miniscule expressions of endless love. And so it's the same way also with the mitzvot. There are many aspects of our lives, what needs to be done, and there are many aspects of why G-d has commanded what it is that He has commanded for us to do. Such that there would be many of them.

                But you know what? It all started out as one kiss, a miniscule kiss, and this is cosmologically so. The current cosmologists going theory, won a noble prize, that the Big Bang was not a vast energy source that everything grew out of. No. The Big Bang began with a microscopic spot of energy which within, and they found this with particle accelerators and readings from the cosmos etc. within a fraction of a second, ten to the seventy-third power, of a fraction of a second of a second. It moved from something you could barely see with a microscope, to everything there is. That was the Big Bang. They can't quite chop where that one came from, but they've gotten it down to that small. If that help anyone. But I'll tell you this is exactly a Ramban in the Chumash, that the world began as a nekudah k'tanah dakah she eyn bo mamash. That the world began as a small miniscule, delicate point that had nothing to it. That's exactly what the cosmologists have arrived. Nothing but a particle. If you can talk about particles. And the fact is, because you can't really talk about particles, that's why everything was right there. All of the energy of the universe was right there. It doesn't matter how big it is. Everything is right there. And this is the first kiss. 

Repeating from above to remind us why: What happens when you just give a kiss? Have you said it all? You know what? You said it all. You know why? Because it's all right there in that moment and in that act… It's every moment of our lives, it's everything that we're here for, it's everything in our connectedness that was in that           

                [Because G-d, in a sense, couldn't have made the world. And the ba'al hatanya teaches this: G-d made the whole world out of one spot, because if it would be anything more than that it would be as if you were trying to contain all the love that G-d has for creation in "here's the whole thing." But when He creates it but not giving you the whole thing, but he creates it by giving you one little dot, so it's clear this is not by virtue by its dimensions, not meant to represent everything that I'm feeling and I'm wanting and desiring for this planet. It's like the one kiss.] Rework this entire idea.

                So the whole world actually began with the one miniscule act. And all we do is so miniscule. If we would be all the way in outer space, you wouldn't be able to see me making Kiddush Friday night. It's like a miniscule point of nothingness. Does that mean something?  I love it. It's like the Ramban and the cosmologists converge and they say, Well, you know, it's nothing just like the first point of Creation was nothing. It was also a miniscule, microscopic spot which contained everything in it. Yeah, this is wild stuff, the way these things have converged now. It's very exciting. Because we're getting very close. 

                This by the way, is an amazing Gemara that says: Once there was a Rabbi who was teaching. And he says, Tomorrow we're going to talk about our friend, Menashe. Now our "friend, Menashe" refers to King Menashe, who was an idol worshipper. So that night he had a dream and his friend, Menashe came to him, angry that he was so disrespectful of him. So Menashe said to him, "What do you think? If you had been in my times, you would have been picking up your skirttails to run in order to get to the avodah zarah to worship it. And by the way, do you know where you cut the bread from when you make motsei?" No, where? "From the place it bakes first." Then Menashe disapperas. He comes into the Beis Hamidrash the next morning, and he says, "Today we're going to speak about Menashe the King." And he teaches them the halachah of where to cut the bread from. So the Ramban says, You know where avodah zarah comes from? It comes from where reality is all dispersed. As if it's all separate things. So you don't realize that it has one energetic source. But if people knew the truth, they would know that it all began as one point. So that makes it a appropriate reflection, as much as a physical reflection can be an appropriate reflection of the truth of the unity of G-d. Because it began as one point. So listen. Everytime you take your sustenance, and you feed your experience of you being separate, which is what you're doing every time you're eating. And if you feed your reality from the point of being separate, so then cut the bread from the point where it started baking from. Meaning the place that's most well-baked on the bread, because everything spread from there. And if you will be reminding yourself of that comtemplative nekudah, of that contemplative point, then you'll always be oriented yourself and connecting to the oneness from where it all emerged. 

                What was the question? Did someone sask me a question. I was answering a question, right? Ah, yeah, We're on target. Because our one deed, when it's completely focused, is the end point of that deed when G-d did when he made the world.  That one point, spread it all out, and then it forms back into the one deed that you're doing now, (it's?) creatively connecting to it. That one kiss which says it all. Really couldn't be anything more.

                I just want to say one more thing. When it becomes real and present and physical, ironically it's the most spiritual thing. Because all the other stuff can't hold it all the way the real present, right on the spot can. When that spot becomes a point of connection within, through a mitzvah--what a great opportunity, oh boy, we're very lucky. I don't think there's any other people like this that knows this truth. What a place it's going to be when everyone knows this truth. Do good, be good, consciousness of doing His will and exxpressing it. What a planet it will become.

                (Question: Leah giving up her ego. Letting go, and Leah's final gift.?) This man named Zevulun, or this name which is Zevulun, the sixth son. Rabbenu B'chaya, a great Kabbalist, said that, the sixth son is the vav, the connectivity. The vav is the sixth letter of the alphabet, one line, it's also the letter of Yaakov because he runs from one end to the other connecting it all, as we saw in Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. He's the ladder, and he's the bridge. So Zevulun is where she totally becomes at one with him in creating a dwelling place which is the reality of them together. Is that clearer to you? (Interrupting) He's a person and a tribe head. He also is the one who provides for Yissahcar, the physical context for Yisasschar to function, as it says,… He dwells on the seashore, because he's always going out to sea to far, distant lands in order to connect with all of life and reality and make it all participant in the Bnei Yissaschar. That's what's going on, spiritually speaking. Physically speaking, he's the one who comes up with the goods, but spiritually, what he does is by bringing good from all over the planet. He doesn't do business in Israel. He's in chutz l'aretz, he's in import-export. He's like, his reality is: one of everything is participating in this, and everything is part of this. It can't be that Bnei Yisasschar is being supported by anything less than the whole planet. That's what Zevulun is. His blessing becomes "he dwells on the end points  of the sea." The sea is the malchut. The ocean is the container that holds it. That's why it says at the end of time, that the knowing of G-d will cover the planet like the sea will cover the yam. Like the waters will cover the yam. So the mefarshim say, What do you mean? I thought the waters are the yam. The yam is the receptacle that gives it from and picture. And then G-d 's knowledge will cover the planet like water, which is the connective force of reality, it hold it together, covers the yam, fills the yam. That's when love will connect all because, really, love is the connective tissue, that's what holds it together. It's love, What else would be holding this together, at least from our perspective?

                My dear talmid, Bariah Schechter,did I tell you this, about the yin and yang? He was learning Chinese medicine. So this Chinese medicine lecturer was explaining to the class about yin and yang. You know, the polarities, going through the whole thing, and she was explaining how they function, etc. and so at the end of class, he raises his hand, and he says, can you tell me something? Do yin and yang love each other? It's like so totally out of whack with Chinese philosohphy-- it's so Jewish. Because what's holding it all together is what we experience as love. Because it's all one thing. The unity of G-d is love. And that's not a kind of romantic thing to say. First of all, we saw that the name havayah, the inner workings of yud-key-vav-key is aleph heh, vet, heh, but beyond the naming, the point is that that's really what it is. Reality is simply manifesting different qualities and realities in different ways. What you experience as love, the different parts of this glass experience as connectivity. It's just different realities expressing in different forms. 

                (Question: Why is Sukkah the thing that the Rambam chooses to teach us about love and joy?) So it has to do with a number of factors that would be somewhat complex to get involved in right now. But the main one is that sukkah  is the main point at the end of the year. You've gathered it all in. You've reached your conclusions.  That's why we read Kohelet then. You're sitting now in a reality which is allowing you to have a vision of what it's all about. That's what it is. Its called the or makif. It's the surrounding light. It's where you go when you're dead from this world. Which is also what the sukkah celebrates, so to speak--you're dead and buried. Now you're able to look back at what it's all about. You're no longer in the fight. You're no longer in the struggle. You're taken care of. Your experiences of life, which has taken care of you. Now I can look back and see what it was all about. So in a certain sense, when you're dead is when you can really connect to life, when you're not fighting off all the stuff, and in the chase. Now that the year is over, now I can connect to the flow of life as it is. It's not about my ego, it's not about my struggle to make myself. Now, I touch life. It has to do with the sukkah.

                Help, Chaya, are you going to save us?  If I can bring it to a point, it's that. It's the joy in contact with the one concentrated act which says it all. And I've let go of my pre-judgemnts and pre-conceptions and pre-decisions, and I'm able to be in the moment as it's presenting itself and to live fully what it is that G-d is speaking through me right now.

                (Question: That thing we want most is often so illusive but the formula you've been presenting is you let it go, and that's what brings it about anyway.)

                You give up on the chitzoniut of it. Meaning, it doesn't have to come through this particular path that I've determined, which might even include me. I know this as a teacher. If I don't let go, and say what I say, and give it over to the students, and they'll take it where they're going to take it. And if I'm not willing to do that, I won't teach.  And nothing will be realized. There are people that are like, I'll only write it in a book if I copyright it. But I'm not going to say anything about my chiddushim to anyone, chas v'shalom they should steal them away. There's such a thing, but then you lose the entire creative dynamic of the creativity which happens by virtue of it being with people. That's what I love, and it took me years to really be at peace at that. There's something that happens in the room because it's you particular people who are here, including the ones who have already left… because it's these particular people. There's a sort of creative house that's been made by virtue of the people who have been sitting here. I'm very aware of that and in a sense, it's not my Torah, it's the Torah of everyone in the room who brought this into reality. It's very interreactive for me.

                For a long time I worried, "Is it because I'm a showman? I have to be showing it off?" A lot of self-denigrating thoughts around that: "It's all status seeking. If I were really honest, I would be sitting down writing it down, and then publish it anonymously." Really, there's something true about Zevulun, a house that's been built by virtue of all that who are connected in it. So yes, it's a letting go of propriety, but it's not a letting go in a sense of a surrender of a giving up, a yeush. There is a joy that comes about by virtue of it and then it produces the new children.

                (Question: How tro bring that joy into something that would be an otherwise painful experience--giving up the shifcha) That's so weird, because the child the shifcha gives birth to, she calls him Asher, because G-d has made me happy. I'm not sure if I explained it, but we see some kind of reflection in that. It's a weird thing, but there are many barren couples that I've seen, that when they adopt their first child, then the gates open up. I'll give you the exact quote. The first one she calls bagad, which is a difficult name to understand, something like "this has been good luck," and then the second one she calls asher, my joy. So, you're looking for what that looks like in life, and how we might be cognizant of that as an avodah, of …a particaular form that we were expected something to come down through, without giving up the purpose and the life purpose but with loosening of the attachment to the particular form that we thought it would hold. Am I saying that right?

                (This looks like as a formula, that birth joy, The joy doesn't come in doing it…. But if you can do it, then joy is born. I don't think it's natural to feel joy in that place. Maybe G-d doesn't want us to feel joy in doing it. Maybe just to rise to the challenge. But in the end that creates a bigger joy.)

                (I have a response to that. Tying in to the class before this and this class. David is one of the happiest people and therefore can connect--)

The Rambam describes him as the "paradigm of joy"--

                (--very fully with Hashem Also we see that David went through some of the most pain of everyone. So his joy could result from these holes, like in the class before we learned that in order to let G-d in, let us fulfill these desires, the ratzon that we need to open up, create holes, see that we are constantly lacking so that we can constantly grow. So that pain is creating those holes, those spaces… by her letting go and experiencing that sadness, so then her holiness is that much more intense because of everything she's going through.)

                (Pain doesn’t have to be looked at as a negative thing. Darkenss isn't bad, just filled of itself. We don't have to fight it. Just as important as death is to life.)

                Actually the midrash says that Rachel complained to Yaakov, How come you're not praying for me? When she says in the verses there, there is a rupture: Bring me children. If you don't, I'm going to die. So Yaakov says, You think I'm instead of G-d? And then the next line is her turning over her shifcha to Yaakov.  So there's a rupture. Did she go through something in between? So the midrash says, she said to Yaakov, How come you're not praying for me? And Yaakov says, Look at your grandmother and see what she did. She was machnisah tsaratah lbetah. Which has a double meaning of tsarah, antagonist wife and her suffering. She brought it into her house. So if that's what needs to be, then that's what I'll do. And then Leah saw that and did the same.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Episode Transcript:

We had been travelling down two different paths regarding the realization of Yaakov and Yisrael, and there is very particular and different relationships between them and Leah and Rachel. And we discovered some very crucial realizations about the way in which Yisrael comes into his fullness regarding in the way he comes back for the pachim ketanim, what he knows to leave behind and what he knows he has to have with him—clarity about that. And we had the growing realization that Yisrael is on one level; one way of looking at him is the realized self, someone who has very deep clarity as to who he is and what he's doing, and since it's Yisrael and not just any person, so his realization is not just a matter of him personally, but is crucial for the entire creation, because Yisrael is the one about whom it says, Bishvili nivrah haolam. At the beginning of Bereshit, Rashi even brings this: Bereshit, bishvil hareshit, for the first one, who is the first one? So the first one is Yisrael reshit tvuato, Yisrael is the first of his production and that is a remez to what G-d says about us, over and over again, before He takes us out of Mitzraim and then leaving Mitzraim to the point where it becomes clear that bni bechroi Yisrael. Yisrael is my first-born son. What does this mean? Yisrael is the first reflection of what I have in mind for creation. And this is also hinted at  by Reshi is a reference to chochmah. Rechit chochmah yirat hashem; the kabbalah interprets that verse as Wisdom is the beginning. Reshit chochmah, because the first movement which is expressed, as opposed to will, which is an impression. But it's the first thought, of Yisrael.

And that is the most primal and primary revelation of G-d's will which also then, all the way down to the bottom, of where it becomes manifest in the world is Yisrael, which is knesset Yisrael which is the malchut, and that's why it says in the kabbalah abayasad bartah. That father has established daughter. That seminal thought of what this world will be becomes reflected all the way down in the daughter who is knesset Yisrael who brings that to realization in full living. And the realization of that becomes expressed for us in the personality or in the story of Yisrael in the world, this man called Yisrael, who is a transpersonal phenomenon, really, it's not him in his persoanl life that's of interest to us of people of Torah, but whether him and his particular life of what is a window to a transpersonal personality, something which is beyond his personal expression and then becomes relevant to all of us for all of eternity. This Yisrael is the conscious reflection of the divine thought as to what this world would be. So his name is Yisrael, in other words is li rosh, I have the head, the head belongs to me, and as we saw deeply, it's the counterpart or the inner life of Yaakov who is akeivi. I have a heel, basically, mamash the other end of reality. He's the outer body, the externality of living. He is the struggle, he is the needing to overcome, he is all of those aspects of life that are the process towards, that are not the realization of. But Yisrael is the realization of. And this was very important for us to recognize not only in terms of what we can become as Yisrael, becoming the head of creation, being it's guiding life, and this could be so powerful to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, that He even gave the name to Yisrael, "kel," and said If I am a G-d in the elyonim, then you are the god in the tachtonim, which means that you are the head of creation, its evolution, its evolving realization and coming to purpose is reliant on you. You are the G-d, you are the ones who are leading the way, you are the ones who have the greater and deeper awareness of My purpose and become alive with that. Become the ones who now, becomes the head of creation and move it towards where it is headed. This is what we are here for and it's so crucial for us to maintain consciousness of that.

                So we've been looking at that in terms of personal life. We've been looking at how a person becomes more aware of his purpose and destiny in life and more clear about what his particular voice and expression are. This will become a very deep and intimate relationship with G-d, rather than falling into a project of making himself "of himself," which is where Pharoah ends up, which B"H we might see in the future as the one who say li v'ori v'ani asitani. You see, bni bechri yisrael is what needs to be established in opposition to Pharoah in being king of the world. That's what happens when G-d says, I'm taking them out. Why are You taking them out? I'm going to show them that in the end, b'ni bechori yisrael, and that's why I'm going to kill your first born sons. Because your first born children are born out of a consciousness of "We make ourselves." But my firstborn born? He remains in the awareness and consciousness that he is my first born so, meaning that he is the expression and manifestation and intended to be in alignment with Me and My purpose. Now that can only be in personal life inasmuch as a person is aware of their own personal purpose.  This is where people get confused sometimes and say, That doesn't sound very spiritual, it sounds self-involved. Spiritual has to do with devolving myself of my personal path. It has to do with becoming generic and being mvatel myself. Isn't that what spiritual is about? Spiritual is also about that, but only if one knows the path of the shov, of coming back into this wrold and beocming re-embodied by having perfect clarity about what it is that my particular portion in that grand scheme, vision and consciousness is. If you lose that, so then you have basically have given up the world, which is not the path of Yisrael, the path of Yisrael is to be eloka btachtonim, to be godly in the lower world, or in a less radical language, to make a dirah batachtonim to make a dwelling place for G-d in the lower worlds, by virtue of that particular manifsestion, which is your life, And that's why it's so personal—li rosh Yisrael, in terms of its realization here. IT's both I have a head, which is a personal reference, that I have a vision, a wisdom. It's a more transcended reference, that I have a head means, I have a G-d. Yisrael, struggle with elokim, who is the name of tG-d about the givens, gematira ha tevah, he is the G-d of the givens. Sarita elokim v'anashim batuchal. That you will be able to overcome them and become the yisrael who is lvado. So all this is different aspects of what I've seen; I've expanded it and deepening it now in terms of its divine aspect.

                It has this quite extraordinary parallel in my mind in terms of what goes through Leah. She goes through her own persoanl process from being the snua anochi down to the experience of hodaya, of the gilui of hod, of her glory that G-d has given her, which is also the realization of her personal chelek, of natati yoter michelki. She knows, as we saw in the mashal of the cohen to know that's G-d having given His self to her, in having given that to her. And then, a interesting thing happens. I'm continued now in the same vision, now in Yisrael's counterpart, Leah.

                She has two more children after Yehudah. After the Chumash says v'taamod laledet, that she's done giving birth. That she has arrived at natalti yoter m'chelki, and that she has been given and her personal realization is the greatest access to G-d (12:02) through the medium of hodaya. And then, she has Yisachar. She declares about him, She's socher, she hilre Yaakov for the night, by giving over the dudaim to Rachel, and when she gives birth to Yisachar, she says, now I'm giving sachar for having turned over my shifcha to Yaakov. If you remember, that was in parshat vayetze, chpater twetny-nine.

                Then we asked, What are you talking about? Yisachar was sachar or hiring out Yaakov to sleep with him. Who are you trying to kid? Why are you referring it back to the sachar of giving over the shifcha? Chapter thirty, verse eighteen, where Leah says, Natan elohim shcari, asher natati shifchati l'ishi. G-d has given me my reward for having given my shifcha over to my husband. Vatikrah shmo Yisahar. Then she calls him yisachar. That's not really honest. Sachor schartichi is what she said to Yaakov when she met him, I have hired you out so yisachar, I'm getting repaid for what I invested. I'm getting back on my investment, that's what's being said there. But the truth is not that way. The truth is that which she is revealing is the deep decret of sachar. That sachar has arrived in her chelek because she has given her limited self up. She gave her husband over to her shifcha so that his realization whould occur. And that is the aspect of the selflessness in the self-realization. This is a paradox. She has surrendered herself, giving up her husband to her shifcha. She has resigned, so to speak, to a higher purpose. She then, what about her. So then something has now happended between her and Yaakov, or the emerging Yisrael. Which is that it's not about her; something has happened that is about them. And that might even mean sometimes that in her limited pleasure and achievement that she gives that up and passes that up and surrenders that. That's how she gets the sachar of yisachar. And that's the only way that divine sachar happens. In the giving up and the surrendering of the particular forms. So it's this paradoxical condition of surrendering the form but insisting upon or realizing the specific and beautiful and individual purpose that is mine. But here something has happened in which she has joined together with him. That His purpose should be realized.

                So we saw this last time, and it was the beginning of the emergence of David in the dudaim. It has to do with the next child she has. In terms of the process we have been watching with Leah, it almost looks like Zevulun is a regression. How? Because next, she has the sixth child. Vatahar Leah, v'teled ben shishi l'Yaakov. Who is the sixth child? Vatomer Leah, zvadani elohim oti zeve tov, G-d's giving me a good portion. Hapaam yizbeleini ishi. So now my husband is yizbeleini, Rashi says, now my husband is a home, a beit zvul, a castle, palace. Now my husband and me are a palace. Rashi says, yizbeleini is lashon beit zvul, mador. A place to live. That's the dirah of tachtonim. What does that mean? Initially when we look at this, we're wondering Does he love, me, does he love me not? At the beginning of her calling her children their names, it was all about is he with me, is he not with me? Then she left that and Yehudah and Yisachar are beyond that, and then she's wondering about him again? No. But it's not she's only in her self, nor is she concerned being with him, it's this whole new thing now. There's a dirah, a place of dwelling that has now emerged by virtue of Zevulun's coming into the world. That's something else. When a couple, in their togetherness are something which is beyond the two of them, that's beit mador. Beit zvul. When the couple is indefinable. When you talk about the home of this couple, so there's a way to look at it, and it's occupied by him and by her, there's the mother and the father, but then there's the home. There's not a new element, nothing's been added, it's still the same two people, but it's an entity that's something else, it's the picture of the whole.  This is what happens at the end of this process that we've been following, that's the beit mador. Now there's going to be a home. That's Zevulun, the end of her giving birth. 

                If you look in the Chumash, the way the machaneh is built (the encampment around the mishkan) so on the front end are Yehudah, Yisachar, and Zevulun. And the reason is because Yisachar and Zevulun are expressions or elements of what Yehudah is because the real malchut has both elements: I have given myself and only in that is there sachar; and it is not just a conglomerate of individual elements, but rather, this is a dwelling place. This is the kingdom of a couple, of a people, of humanity, reality, the entire cosmos, which is the kingdom of G-d. And it's a kingdom because all of the individual elements are within a greater whole, which is defined by being this kingdom.

That's what a malchut is. It's the speaking of the twenty-six, meaning, shem havayah, kaf vav, and mem lamed taf, milat, the speaking. G-d's presence has become a word, which means to say that it has become an expression and a manifestion, just  like a word is. You can't pick a word apart into its letters and expect to have anything left of the word. But a word is nothing more than the conglomeration of its individual letters, isn't it? I mean, it's just a bunch of letters, right? If you really want to know what's in the word, then start picking it apart, the way a scientist will start analyzing and dissecting different pieces and parts of, let's say a butterfly. There's the entrails, and there's these little fuzzy things, that's all the butterfly is, isn't it? And if you dissected it all and put it on a slide, you have it now, you can enlarge it, and you can see all of the elements, and now we're really finding out what a butterfly is. And if we can enlarge it more in a deeper picture, then we'll really, really know what a butterfly is. It's exacly in a sense, the opposite direction of finding out what a butterfly is. Because a butterfly can only be known, not only by seeing its whole, but by seeing it in context of the flowers, and seeing it flying from place to place, and a beautiful springtime afternoon, and of lovers in the field, and of children frolicking. What is a butterfly? Is a butterfly not all of that, too? You'd never draw a butterfuly--if you're really drawing one— without the sun shining, and flowers blossoming in the background, and maybe some children and a couple of bees buzzing around. That's a butterfly. No! A butterfly, if you just dissect it, you'll find out what a butterfly is. So who's right?

So, clearly, you can find out what a butterfly is by dissecting it, but you're finding out the elements of what makes a butterfly, but a butterfly is what I just described. The truth is, then a butterfly is really only—what is it? What did I add when I put together all the pieces of a butterfly, and make it into a butterfly? What did I add? Nothing. It's just the same pieces that were there when it was dissected on the slide. And I didn't really add anything when I put it into the background; all these things were there before. But the wholeness of that vision becomes the picture that really is what a butterfly is.  I have to be careful about how I use the word "really." But I've added nothing else. That adding nothing else is the beit mador. Now it's the home. What was just added was just a bunch of kids before, and the mom and dad and did something get added here? Yeah, it became a word. G-d became a word, so to speak, yud key vav key became a word, it became a number.  This is why gematria is so important. When it becomes a number, then you can't divide it up any more. It's just this one entity.  That's malchut, the realization of dirah batachtonim. But people make mistakes sometimes. People think that dirah batachtonim means that I'm the empty vessel and He's in it. No. Dirah batachtonim means I'm making a dirah and He's in it.  What does it mean to make a dwelling place? That there is something in the connection between me and Him, in the realization of all of this together, which is its own reality. And only by virtue of its unification. That is where now things have arrived for Leah in her relation with Yisrael, and that is why she is done giving birth when that happens, because that process is over. She has become the lamed vav, the lo, the e'eseh lo, complete belonging together in something  which is this transcendence of the particular elements that compose the composite reality that is the beit mador.

                This is very crucial to realize—the trivialization of what malchut is in terms of our relationship with G-d because it's not something different. It's the same kind of a thing in which it's not Him or us, and we're not standing separate, but we form the malchut, which is HaKadosh Baruch Hu's reflection and manifestation into reality.

                This is David. David, who is born out of the dudaim. David, who is born out of Yehudah. It shouldn't confuse you—Yisachar, David? He comes from Yehudah, Because Yehudah comes together with Yisachar and Zevulun. It's part of his camp. You can't have Yehudah without Yisachar and Zevulun, in terms of there being a giving up of self in order that there be sachar. And also a realization in the overarching picture of what it is, which is no added element but is the overall picture of what is. And that is David, and that's why, in the end, David, is also the dod, the dodim, the lover, which is where very true love is realized, when it's not something that I experience as me or you, it's where we're together in a picture. Using the word picture, because that's exactly how malchut is describe in Kabbalah. Malchut is described as a temunah, which directly derives from chochmah, wisdom, which is kneged vision, the first vision. The first vision then becomes realized then when all of those elements become incorporated into one picture. That's what I was referring to when I said Aba yasad barta, that father established daughter. First vision brings daughter—daughter being malchut—who is the feminine aspect, because in a sense she is an encasement, the holding of, an incorporating of all the elements into one entity.  So, I wouldn't exactly call it fleshing out, but rather abstracting some of the elements of what we've been looking at. In Chassidut, this is called a birur.

Last time we were in the body with things and storyline, but I'm trying to give you access to the spiritual, transpersonal aspect of it. It's an irony, and I hope some of you hold the space, but the more it becomes abstracted and spiritualized, actually, then the more it becomes applicable to myriad applications. The more it's just particular, then it's just one particular story. But the more you abstract it, then the more you see that it's shayach, here, it's shayach here, it's shayach between me and my kids, it's shayach between me and  my husband, it's shayach between me and the rest of you in this classroom, it's shayach between me and the rest of humanity. This isn't just one story, this is a reality applicable to everything. 

People say, Wow, that's really high! When you say, That's really high, you mean it's something which is beyond the specific. It's like when you're standing up on a mountain and you see the whole picture. And now you can say, I am going to see that reflected in and—now I am going to emphasize this part of it. (31:30) You have a high perpective. We use sort of a geographic location to talk about something which is intellectual, it's an abstraction. But that's the point, that's how we experience high things, low things. Look, low things are right here (demonstrating). So high things would be applicable to myriad applications. That's why it's so important for us to gain access to this in the Torah,  otherwise the Torah just becomes a storybook, and then you get all sorts of crazy contortions of how to read it and what to do with it—it becomes historicized and irrelevant, etc. (sic)

I say this specifically in the context of Yisachar, because the Rabbis say he becomes the father of yodei haitim: Bnei Yisachar yodei haitim, the children of Yisachar are the ones who know the times. Those are the rabbis. True Rabbis know the times. What does it mean to be a real talmid chacham who knows the times? He knows how to apply things to varying times. He is aware and conscious of shifting times. Changing times. People who stay stuck in times as it was, so they can't really have anything relevant to say, so then everyone, they'll try to push you or force you into some previous mode when G-d's moved time on already.  If you belong to the world of Yisachar who has been born of Leah's having given herself up, it's not about me, let me touch what is right now, then I can become yodei haitim. That's a verse in Divrei Hayamim. Bnei Yisachar yodei haitim, which the Chachamim say, yeah, that's the Talmidei Chachamim. Now I can touch what really is, I can touch the eyt, I can touch the time. It's not about my thing. But weren't you just talking about your personal vision, your own voice? Yes, of course I am. But how is it that your own voice comes to expression if what you're doing is you're giving yourself up to the higher reality? Gee, I don't know. I can't answer that question in a dichotomous thinking, it's a paradox.  It's like people say, it depends on the place you're coming from. For me to give up my own voice in this reality means to give up the voice that is meant to be in this reality. So it would mean giving up the reality that I’m committing myself to. In other words, if I'm committing myself to G-d's purpose and the realization in this world, so I’m giving myself up to that. That's marvelous, but you're missing in the picture. I thought you were committed to G-d's realization and manifestation in the world. That's right, so I’m giving myself up, so I'm selfless now. Selfless? Well, that's too bad because your self was supposed to be part of that reality. Ok, so I'm going to be involved in my own self. So then I'm forgetting about the whole of reality and all of G-d's creation. So? Well, but I wanted to be committed to that. Okay. So then be committed to that. Okay, so I'm giving myself up. So, what do you want me to do? Which way to go? It's a paradoxical condition which I think people experience. Like there's a flow of personal realization, a flow of personal joyous creativity of "this is what I'm bringing to the world." When it's pure, that's the way it always comes down. Then you start taking it for yourslef and you think, it's about me, and my own etc. It's garbage, it's junk already, it's lost,  and then you become an idealog(?), and you have this idea that you're trying to promote, then you lose yodei haitim, you can no longer be related to what's here and now in the changing times because you've become convinced that only what I bring is what needs to be brought. So then you've lost it, and you go back.

So it's an ongoing oscillation between these visions and realizations, but oscillation is what produces right consciousness.  That's the oscillation of going up and down the ladder. That's the oscillation that produces Leah's coming into her personal realizatoin and it being expressed through hod and hodaya which then comes down into its two elements of Yisachar and Zevulun. There's a sachar to this. There's a personal reward involved in this which comes by virtue of my having resigned myself and surrendered myself and there's a consciousness of "this is a picture that I'm a part of," which is called Zevulun. There's a big mador. So now we've built this house together. So that's the dirah batachtonim where G-d says atah, elokah batachtonim, that's the dirah batachtonim. It's only when it has that real combination of my manifestation in the picture which is the one which is beyond the specifics of who are the members in the picture.

                If I'm saying things that on an intellectual level don't make sense, that's fine. It's a state of being, and it's a difficult thing to divvy out. And the only way it becomes divvied out is through the two additional children. They can like show you this. So, this becomes the world of David, because the king really has to have that. And David's most powerful and beautiful thing which the Rabbis teach us about David Hamelech—it's important to note that there are some important Chamamim that say things more overtly. This is a picture of Hillel Hazakeyn, one of the teachers of Torah she b'al peh—he has to do with hod because l'hodot ul'halel, remember we're talking on Chanukah, hilul, Hillel, is the one who's dancing in simchah at the Simchat Beit Hashoevah, the Water-Drawing Festival. He says, Im ani kan, hakol kan. If I am here, everything is here. That's Hillel. If you remember, Hillel is the one who said, When you're dancing in front of the kallah,  say kallah na v'chasudah, because of course she finds chen in her husband's eyes, and who needs to be pulled together. (I really see why this needs to be a book! [sic.]) But the point is, saying Im ani kan, hakol kan, is a reflection of that and in the Kabbalah, it says that he was experiencing malchut, he was experiencing the Shechinah. Chazal say that the Shechinah was present at the Simchat Beit Hashoevah. The Shechinah is most present when there is joy. Because joy is the experience of the flow of His presence. That's when the Shechinah is there. And that's why Hillel the Zakeyn says, Im ani kan hakol kan. If there is a real realization of ani, then hakol which is a reference to malchut, hakol is here. Everything is here. I am not standing apart from there. I am not standing apart from reality observing it. It's all right here. But all will only be here if I am truly me. Now try go living that.

                There is beautiful passage in Orot Hakodesh by Rav Kook in which he brings from Yechezkel HaNavi standing somewhere in Babylon by a river called Nahar Kvar. He says V'ani b'toch hagola. I am in the exile. He says the following: It's a beautiful passage and it deserves its own teaching. He says, Ani b'toch hagola that the Navi is saying, is reflecting the greatest abomination, when the I goes into exile. This is both personal and kabbalistic, because ani is the name for malchut. So when the I goes into galut, and describes how this has happened over the course of time and how things descended into the condition that the I has gone into Galut. And it all begins with Yechezkiel standing on Nahar Kvar.

It's the simplest thing. Nahar Kvar is the absolute opposite of being yodeya haitim. Because Nahar Kvar literally means the River of Wasness. That's the River of Babylon. The deep thing about the River of Wasness is exactly that non-dynamic aspect of selfhood which happens when you separate yourself out from the all. I'll tell you exactly what I mean by that. What happens when a person gets stuck in the past, and is all about shorring up and establishing and consolidating everything of the past, now it's going to be solid. This is me. I've got it. Finally I've got it. This is me. If your experience of this is what you have been in the past, everything you've come to, then you have it like, I'm stopping here. Now everything else is going to be around what I am. So the ani goes into galut. The ani goes into exile. Why? Because the ani is always  a dynamic. Why is it a dynamic? Of course it's a dynamic. Even once you've become aware of all the things you've done up until now, and even though you've done work in establishing and realizing what your purpose is. That's all great and crucial work, now it's become clear. But as soon as you're done you say, Now I've got it, Now I know exactly who I am now, your ani is in dynamic, because your ani is always a dynamic of everything that's happening right now.  It's got to be . This is why the Chachamim say that Yaakov couldn't come back to Eretz Yisrael because he was just a fire. And he needed Yosef who was the flame. But I want to put aside now the question of Yosef as the flame—that's its own thing.  But Yaakov is a fire. Yaakov, by the way, is malchut ila'ah. In the kabbalah, malchut is tiferet, Yaakov, the lower malchut is David. And in the middle you have this flame who is Yosef, the yesod. He's a fire. What does it mean to be a fire, which by the way becomes most manifest in hod, which is the fire midah. You can't be yesterday's fire—

"I am going to be yesterday's fire." Fire is always something which is burning right now. As soon as it becomes yesterday's fire, it's not fire anymore.  Let's get a snap on that fire, and freeze! Freeze? Well, that's the opposite of fire, isn't it? People do this, and I totally understand why. This is it, I got myself, I know exactly who I am, could you leave me alone with self reflection and contemptaion, in thinking, and self-awareness? Thinking, Okay, are you done? Now you're finished, now you are who you are, now be that.

That's a falsehood. That's when you try to separate it out from what's real and right now. That's Nahar Kvar. That's, in a sense, the life project of Pharoah, who is the king of Mizraim, the king of the very first place of galut, who, like, li ori v'ani asitani. I have made myself, which is also a statement that Yechezkiel Hanavi says about Pharoah. Pharoah declares, The river is mine, li ori, vani asitani, and I have made myself. Interesting. He is a man who basically is the source for Nahar Kvar. The river is mine, I own it, I posees it. I possess Moshe. (inaud. 47:45) Vani asitani, I have made myself, I am done. The project has been finished, it's complete. Fantasti, you're amazing, and he'll be the greatest dictator ever that could be imagined. And that's all you could be, is a dictator who rules over it all and is always trying to keep it under control that it should never counterveil or contradict what I have realized to be myself. That's the biggest lie.

That's why at the end of kriyat shema we say the most amazing thing. It makes you shudder to finish kriyat shema. Because at the end of kriyat shema we say Ani hashem elokeichem asher hotzeiti etchem m'eretz mitzrayim lihiyot lahem elohim I am G-d who's taking you out of Mitzrayim that I should be your G-d. Ani hashem elokeichem. And this is how Rav Kook ends that passage. What exacly are we saying when we say Ani hasehm elokeichem? I am the L-rd your G-d. Who is speaking there saying, I am the L-rd your G-d? (49:15) But inasmuch as G-d dynamically always reflects His reality in creation the greatest port through which He manifests that is going to be the Ani of the dynamic person who is now in movement, in an ongoing movement of a changing reality. Only that will be G-d right now. What else could be G-d right now? What was G-d yesterday? And the yodei haitim, the ones who know the times, the bnei Yisachar, who know the reward, what the yesh sachar, and the pleasures of what is real, present and current—they are the only ones who can produce Torah which is appropriate to being psak halachah and speak to people in a way that's real for them. That's what Hillel is saying, ani kan—that's why Hillel, by the way, is a lashon of fire—(inaud-v'hillo ner? (50:28) we saw hilul is a language of fire, od glow. So there he is glowing in the Beit Hamidrash, dancing, on fire, the Rabbis say they would toss around firey torches at the Simchat Beit Hashoevah. Im ani kan, hakol kan. If I am here, then Shechina is here. Why is Shechina hakol? Because it's everything which is right now. And only that is what would be real to say about me, that I am me, I am ani. 

                So this becomes the ani, becomes the world of malchut but only when it's a cleanly and clearly realization of a expression and manifestation of a porthole of G-d is what ani kan hakol kan. And I want to tell you a beautiful thing. Standing on Nahar Kvar, standing at this River of Babylon of what was. So there are different experiences that people have when they're standing on a riverside. Most people relate to rivers as time; it's a flow. Some people relate to rivers all the time that's gone by. Some people relate to the time that 's going to be. It might have to do with your age. But for whom the river is what was, those are the ones who stand in Galut. At Yom Kipper, there's one other place that this word eyt, which becomes very prevelant in Kohelet, for reasons we won't get into now, but this word et yodei haitim becomes prominent in Yom Kippur, because the man who, the lo b'chol eyt, yavo al ha kodesh, if you look at the word at the beginning of parshat acharei mot which describes the avodah of Yom Kippur, so you'll see that there's a lot of talk about et there. Ayin taf, times, and there are twenty-eight times, there's an eyt for this, an eyt for that.

So, on Yom Kippur there's a person who takes the se hazazel out to the midbar, the desert, he takes the scapegoat out to the desert and he's called the ish iti. And there are different explanations of what that means to be an ish iti. What's an ish iti and why is he the relevant person to be doing this? Literally it means He is a man of the time. That's exactly it because true atonement and release from the past which binds us can only happen when a person is able to be now in this moment. That's why he's the ish iti. It's the simple pshat. He's the time man or the timely man, relating completely to the time. It's a crazy thing, but that's why we say Kol Nidre at the beginning of Yom Kippur. The reason in your machzor that it says we say Kol Nidre is that once upon a time there were these marranos. And these marranos had to hide out, when they came to shul, and they would have to be absolved from oaths that they would take from accepting Catholicism. And then we have to ask for permission to be mitpalel with the avar yanim, to pray with the sinners, the transgressers, a great historical stuff, put it on a shelf in a library.

But that's not why we're really saying Kol Nidre. It's like how the history brought it about why we should say Kol Nidre at the beginning of Yom Kippur. But the truth is that you need to be matir your neder at the beginning of Yom Kippur, because I am now enetering into complete presence. I cannot be bound by the oaths I've taken. It's as simple as that. And we ask G-d for a heter that we should pray with the avar yanim. It's so funny because avar yan in Hebrew means a transgressor, and a past-er. An avar yan is someone who is in the past. Those are the sinners. Because they cannot comes loose from what has to be now and always being dragged by and controlled by and determined by what has been.

                So this brings us down into a world of real malchut and a place of real loving.  Why? Because love always has to do with relating in truth with what is. You could never love what is not. You could only love what is. And always has to be present. And that becomes dod, the David, who has all this. This is why—and maybe we'll end with this—ironically, David wasn't meant to live. Because malchut cannot be its own thing, it can only be in the context of all. The midrash says, David was not supposed to live.  Adam Harishom was being shown all the different generations, the midrash says. So he's going through them. He's impressed by this, and this, and he comes to David. He says, Wow, who is this man? That's David, the lover. How long is he going to live? So G-d says, he's not going to live at all. What do you mena he's not going to live? Well, he's going to be stillborn. That's what the midrash says, So Adam says, not going to live at all? That can't be! Don't let that be! So G-d says, What do you want to do about it? Adam Harishon says, I'll give him some of my life. How much do you want to give him? I'll give him seventy years. Seven is kneged the malchut. That's why Adam Harishon only lives nine hundred and thirty years, when he was supposed to have lived a thousand. Elef shanim b'einecha ki yom etmol, A thousand years in Your eyes are like yesterday. Tehillim syas, Who is that referring to? To Adam Harishon, who is supposed to live a thousand years. But that is if you're supposed to live yesterday, ki yom etmol. But if you live in the present, David emerges with his seventy years. And he is able to be that because only he is nothing of his own, and he is everything together. But by being the specific person that he is. And don't try to understand that. Because you can't. Just like it was impossible for David to come into the world.—it was a physical impossibilty for the world to contain David Hamelech, for him to be born. He was stillborn. Because he is nothing of his own. He is everything all at once. That's David, that's real love . That's yodeya itim, That's to be one who's really so present and so real to what is that he can say, Ani hashem elokeichem emet, this is true only this is true.

 I don’t know what to do with this, all you can do is sing,  which is why he becomes the Anim zmirot yisrael, he just sings, and longs for, but sings—it's a vibration because a song is a vibration. He's just vibrating back and forth with this reality and then he becomes the singer. And then all of reality becomes like a resonance of his presence. This is so deep, that ultimately only that can become the tikkun for the moon that complained, we can both use the same crown?  Yes, of course we can both use the same crown if our realization is this being a big dirah. This being a big home, Who's giving and who's taking, you're not looking at who's giving and who's taking, when it's a home—that's stupid! You're in a reality that's far beyond that right now. That's why at kiddush hachodesh we're saying David melech yisrael chai v'kayam, and we're celebrating the re-emergence of the moon, and that possibility for that realization of that kind of a wholeness which is what the moon lost at her first complaint.  Because only through David Hamalech's consciousness, who holds it all—im ani kan, hakol kan—will you ever overcome this contestual foolishness at like, you can't have two lights, holding one keter. Yes, you can, if it's really one keter. It's the keter of the malchut, It's the higher supernal consciousness that has both specific and all and only Him at once.  It's a peleh and the (inaud. 1:01:28) says, there's nothing except to meditate that kind of consciousness. Nothing except to vibrate that. It's not an enunciated, delineable expression. It's only a song. It becomes the shir pashut which the kabbalah says, there'a shir pashut and a shir m'chupal and a shir meshulash, there's a single song and a double song and a triple song, this is the single song. Yisrael is yashar or yasor, he will sing kel. He will be singing G-d. That's David, just singing G-d. But he's singing and dancing, and he loses it when he's dancing for the mishkan he's losing it, and he says to Michal, who is kelim, and who's trying to contain it all, I'll make myself even more disgraceful and dance even more, it's got to be alive and real, actual and present, if it's going to be anything that is expressed the truth of his love, That is the dod which is david, and it eventually becomes in Shir Hashirim, ani l'dodi and dodi li. And I am for David, and David is for me, I am for my lover and my lover is for me. In which all of that delineation and distinction disappears into the rapture of the presence of G-d. And the realization that it is only through the particular voice which is the one who he is gifted with, that His presence will be song. Eventually Rachel touches that. That's why it says, Mi ikolech mi bechi. V'einayich min dima. You stop your voice from crying and your eyes from tearing ki yesh sahcar l'peulatech. Becaues there is yesh sachar, that's yisachar. L'peulatech. That’s its own story, the story of Rachel. But David is the continuation of Yehudah, the dalet of Yehudah into its realization of the perfect lover. And gives us all access to love through his accomplishment, his realization. So today if I might summarize. Let me give you a brief summary.

                We followed through bringing some kind of completion to what we have been seeing of Yisrael and Leah, and we saw Yisrael, li rosh, in the consciousness of creation which comes to specific expression through a particular person, and of course Yisrael is the greatest expression of that, being bni bechori, being the child of G-d, his first born son, what he really wants for his planet, for his family, so to speak, and Leah for her completing of the process, making a beit mador, making a dwelling place, which is a reality which is beyond the particular specifics, it's the whole entity. And so when a marriage becomes a whole entity rather than two players. When the world becomes an entity rather than all these players, when man and G-d together become, so to speak, in the aspect of G-d which is reflected and expressed, not his deepest being, but the aspect of Himself that becomes expressed, when they become two players, then they become one together, so then that becomes the true dirah b'tachtonim, the real true dwelling place, and that becomes revealed eventually through David Hamelech and the malchut. 

                This is what we're referring to when we say Shem yisrael hashem elokeinu hashem echad. When Yaakov came to give the brachot to his children, it says he wanted to reveal to them the end time, the ketz. And then it got blocked. So he started wondering, Maybe something is wrong with you people, that I can't reveal the ketz to you. You know what they say to him? Shema yisrael, Stop talking to us like Yaakov who only sees the struggle, the disparate parts. Shema yisrael, hashem elokeinu hashem echad. We know that there is one head to all this creation. We know that it's all one personality coming to realization and we know we're parts of that. Give us a bracha that we should be worthy parts of that. And let that be your revelation of the ketz, the end of time, when you give each of us a bracha that's appropriate to who we are, and pray that it should come its full manifestation and realization. Let that be your bracha. And that will be the ketz. Shema yisrael, Listen yisrael, not Yaakov, Hashem elokeinu, It's all one, it's only Him. And he says to that, baruch shem kevod malchuto leolam vaed. His name is blessed. And you know to whom His name is blessed is referring to? Each and every one fo you. That's his name. That's Baruch. That's the blessings he gives. Baruch shem keod malchuto leolam vaed. That's the blessings he gives, His malchut. Should be blessed forever through you in the unfolding expression and realization of His oneness. Can you live that? If you can live that then the ketz is right here. So then every time you say, Shema Yisrael, then you're saying, Yup, we're still the children of Yaakov struggling the path towards Yisrael, towards the realization of the shir el, the song of G-d, still singing it, we're still

L-rding over elokim so to speak, the givens in referring to the consciousness of the purpose and vision of all of creation. The kets is here. You can hear it singing. Are there any questions?

I've been walking with this visual--when you talked about Yaakov, everything he touched. The wake we leave behind us as we walk and it’s a really powerful image because it brings so much consciousness to everything, the movement, I can't seet he energy necessarily, but let's say I'm walking in water. And the same is tue in walking in the air. So envisioning, what is the wake, how am I changing everything around me. So the song also brings a whole other elemen tto that, another level to that image.

Very much. Yeah, it's like sympathetic vibration. I believe a lot that prayer is like that and that's why David is the great pray-er also. And he says, V'ani tefilah. He says about himself, my selfhood is prayer. And a lot of how prayer works—and this is also from Rav Kook—is through a sort of sympathetic vibration. You've shifted consciousness. And since your consciousness is part of all consciousness, so then when your consciousness shifts, so then everyone's consciousness shifts. Even if it's just a little bit, depending on how focused and precise you are, so it will become more or less impactful. Even on that level, prayer is never lost. Because you've shifted the consciousness of the planet which you are a part of. People look at iyun tefilah, Chazal say this, iyun tefilah tochelet v'moshechet machalat lev. An ongoing longing becomes a sickness of the heart. Chazal say, those are the people who it's a pasuk in mishleh, they are always seeking to see if their prayers have been realized. So they're heartsick.  The meaning of that is that's because they are looking in the wrong places. In other words, it's happening. It may not be happening as quickly, as overtly, or external as you want it to be happening. But it's happening. That's the type of iyun tefilah that Chachamim say is not an acceptable iyun tefilah, to be looking to see if it's happened. You got prayer wrong. You get the wrong idea about prayer. It has to do with it happening in the world, of course, but it also has to do with everything having to do with sympathetic vibration. Because my ani is now vibrating at a different tenor so then v'ani tefilah—so another pasuk that David says, v'ani tefilati lecha, et ratzon. That my ani is a tefliah to you in an et ratzon, in a moment of will, like a moment that we were talking about before. Like I am totally in contact with the will of this moment. I can only be contacted with the will of this moment If I am not completely bound by and distorted by my preconceptions and decisions and predeterminations of what ought to be right now. I can pray and talk to G-d about changing, growing, and moving this, but only if I am willing to see exactly what is right now and be in that and be real with that—that's v'ani tefliati lashem et ratzon. That's where my prayer is really yours, G-d, when it's in the eyt ratzon, when it's in the real timeliness of will, when I am totally connected to His will right now. Only then can I talk about impacting that, changing that moving that, shifting that. But if it's all about predetermined stuff, so then you're not aligned. And you might also be impacting things but it will be far less in the alignment in a way that it will be cause the vibration in the reality at large. Just like only Hillel can say im ani kan hakol kan. If myself is here, then all is here. If ani is not here, all is not here, can't be here.  That is really the Vayifga bamakom that we saw at the beginning of Yaakov as he began his journey, and it really was a journey, leaving Beer Sheva, going out, hitting the place, going to sleep, letting go, so then he could really be in the place, and then everything is there. All of a sudden everything in Eretz Yisrael is right there. That was Vayifga bamakom Vayishkav bamkom hahu Vayishkav, the Arizal says, Vayesh kaf bet.

There is reality of these twenty-two letters, now form the words. Go to sleep and dream. Not as an escape but as a way to become real. Then he can go to a place called Charan. Which means anger. Charon af. He can go to the place which means anger. Anger is the ultimate emotive expression of disjointed non-alignment. Not accepting what is. I will not take this, I will not have this.  This is not the way I want it to be. YA! Charan! No! That is exactly the opposite of Vayifga bamakom. And all of that anger, which becomes total disconnected and total disalignment is where Yaakov needs to go to make his tikkun. And only by living through that and Lavan, and falsehood and lies, which create anger, which are primarily of the ani not being there present to, not being emet to, as in ani hashem elokeichem emet. Your ani can only be elokeichem when it's emet.  It's exactly what G-d is bringing you right now and sending you right now, so if you don't have that than you're just going to be angry. So Yaakov goes and becomes what he needs to become there. And only after that, only after you go through anger can you come to Eretz Yisrael. This by the way is why Moshe Rabbeinu lost Eretz Yisrael in anger, this the Maharal explains, that in hitting the rock and expressing anger there was a disalignment. And you can't go into Eretz Yisrael like that. Because Eretz Yisrael is Yis-ra-el, and needs to come through Cana'an, hachna'ah of what is, surrender, hoda'ah, acceptance of being whole will. Only from that can be born the tikkun which allows him to come back to Eretz Yisrael knowing what's meant to be with him, what's not meant to be with him, get the pachim ketanim, and then be able to face Esav and all that false reality and move ahead into all that we saw.

What about mourning?

I don't think that takes a person out of the now. I hear what you're saying, A sorrow for what has been lost.

There's a process in the grieving to go over—

It should be noted that aveilut is not a time for simcha. Avelut is the opposite of simchah. There is a taking of hiatus from the presence of being, in that sense. I hear that.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Episode Transcript:

Last time we explored a certain element of the introduction of currency to the planet by Yaakov. It sounds almost like a side point, but actually it's something significant globally speaking and in context of the story we were involved in. I want to remind us of some of the aspects of what we had been seeing and I want to take it somewhat with us to a different place today. And I'm hoping we'll also get to learn a little Chassidut together. We had explored together Yaakov and Yisrael and Yaakov and Leah.

Something which I realize is important for us to recognize about Yaakov in that transition of the battle--which is an internal battle and external battle in which Yaakov becomes transformed into Yisrael--has a great deal to do with the discovery of his personal realization, by which I mean Yaakov is like the external body. Yaakov is the heel. Literally, his name means "the one who is hanging onto the heel," trying to get around the heel, Yisrael, though it says in the Tikkunei Zohar is li rosh, "I have a head, I have a mind." And in that sense is the exact opposite from Yaakov in terms of the relation of one to oneself. For in Yaakov, the primary relation is to the body, whereas the primary relation is to the soul (or to put it in less spiritual language, the identity, the particularlity the specificity of who he is). It may be a funny way to put it, but see we all share heels. In Chazal, the heel is always the expression of embodiment.

In fact, there is a story in Baba Batra about one of the Chachamim who went into the Maharat Hamachpelah--this is parenthetical to show you that the heel is that way--and he saw the heels of AdamHarishon and they were glowing like the orb of the sun. So the Maharal explains on that passage, well, what the impressive point was, it was his heels. Because that's ultimate embodiment. And that's what Chazal teaches us when they say, in parshat Ekev, that there are mitzvot that a person crushes under his heels. It means you're just in body as primary, and that means that you're ignoring what these mitzvot in their miniscule details might be coming to teach you, because you're insensitive of that, unless you have a very refined sense of who you are.

The more refined a sense of who you are, the greater the detail you will pay attention to when it comes to mitzvot, and when it comes to anything in them. The more refined the identity, the greater the sensitivity to detail. I mean you know that when it comes to music or art, a person who has very refined taste will be very attentive to detail. A person who has a refined awareness of others, so they will be very exquisitely sensitive to the details in the messages that they send, and if a person is finely attuned to their own identity, they become very exquisitely aware around details.

And I say this in the context of what we had been learning last time and that is that Yaakov in going back for the pachim ketanim, specifically, remember that the Chazal taught us, that he went back for the small jars, after he had sent his children and his wives across the river. Vayivater Yaakov lvado.Yaakov goes back and he's completely alone-- that we saw last time, and in that complete aloneness that the Chumash is describing for us is going to become his very clear and refined sense of identity which is so crucial before his meeting with his twin brother for the final clarification.

But the way Chazal describe it very interestingly is in his attentivenes s to the fine detail of the mamon, of the possessions that he has. No, I'm not leaving those behind, those are important. Come on, they're pachim ketanim.  No, I'm going to go back and get them. Do you know you're risking your life to go back and get them? Well, what life am I risking exactly? My embodied life? Really, what are we talking about? So of couse, if we're talking halachically, risking your life is dochech, getting your pachim ketanim, etc. But the Chumash is talking meta-halachically, not chas v'shalom anti-nemian, but what I mean is the Chumash is describing something which is a root reality which is that the Tzaddik gives up his external body for the clarity of realization of his internal identity. See, our external reality is a shared given, we all share them, and everyone has a different one from everyone else. But if I ask you how you identify yourself, so if you go deep enough, then you won't identify yourself as the person who's got a beauty mark above her lip whereas she doesn't. That's how we distinguish ourselves from one another. I have a beauty mark and she doesn't have a beauty mark. Or I have red hair and she has brown hair. That's not how we-- when we go anywhere lower than the most overt and superficial ways of identifying ourselves. That's not how we identify ourselves. We'll talk about the qualities that we have, and if we go deeper we'll talk about the values that we have. If we go deeper we'll talk about the vision that we have…we'll talk about deeper and deeper aspects of ourselves of that which we identify ourselves as being.

This is fairly obvious stuff. It's good to be reminded of it from time to time. This is what is being taught when he goes back, because it's relevant. How is it relevant? It's relevant because he's got now a very fine-tuned sense of who he is, what he needs to take with him in the world in order to do what it is that he needs to do. And what really belongs to him in the world. And this is why we saw last time, that Chazal teach us that the Tzaddik gives even greater priority to his possessions than to his own reality. Because his body is the common, and his possessions are a reflection, if they're precise, and by the Tzaddik they're very precise, they are a reflection and an expression of his inner self and of his inner identity.

So have you had this experience? As you get clearer, you start to clear away the junk.   It is a really interesting thing, that when you get clear on who you are, what you're about, what you're going for. I'm curious to know how many of you have had the experience that you're coming in out of the fog and you say, right, this is what it's about, this is what I'm for, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, you start clearing off the desk, start throwing out junk…And your relation to your possessions becomes even more fine-tuned. Because there are things that you are taking along and there are things that, just the junk of the past, or is never really relevant to the truth of who you are. You kind of bought it while you were in the fog. So that our relation to these external aspects are a direct reflection of how much clarity internally that we have of who we are and of what we're doing.

This is Yaakov. He has a very exquisite sense of exactly what it is that needs to be with him and what doesn't. And so in his going back there he goes back lvado, alone and becomes very alone, excruciatingly alone.  Because the more clear and exact and pinpointed a person becomes about their uniqueness, so the more excruciatingly alone they are.    Because there's absolutely no one like me and that's the truth. And we can talk about things we share, but when it comes to the pinpointed sense of li rosh, I have a head, I have something which is my contact point with that which I am going towards. I have a selfhood. So then we really because lavdo. Vayivater lvado.

I say this is important for me to point this out because this transition is the transition which changes him from being the one who is so to speak, after the heel, to the one who has a mind, a head, and becomes Yisrael. This is crucial because the whole world was created for Yisrael,. Bereshit barah Elokim. Bereshit Rashi says, what is Bereshit? Yisrael Bereshit tvuato. Yisrael is His first. Bni bchori Yisrael. My first-born son is Yisrael. What is Yisrael? If I talk cosmically, Yisrael is the element of create, of conscious identity of what this planet is, what this cosmos is, and Yisrael is attached to that, that's Yisrael. And those who join that consciousness and awareness of what this purpose of what this create is about, they join Yisrael. But Yisrael is that, so as Yaakov becomes aware of who he is, he becomes Yisrael, and then he be, so to speak, the first-born, the one that all of the other children will follow, meaning that he is showing the way. (12:13)

You hear, this is so important. This is why he is the only one who can say bishvili nivrah haolam. really The more exact a person becomes in their realization of the precision of their selfhood, so the more truly they can say bishvili nivrah haolam, because the world was made for Yisrael. So the more I am Yisrael, so the more the world is created for me.   because then I become the consciousness head of the entire cosmos, to the point which we saw last week, in this almost blasphemous midrash, which has Yaakov almost becoming G-d-like. But that's what happens when he becomes so clear in who is is, so that's when G-d says, okay, now you have become a G-d in the tachtonim. That's not, chas v'shalom, not to say that there are two G-ds, that's exactly the opposite. It's you have become so at one with Me and My will for my desire for this planet, that indeed you will be the consciousness of G-d in the planet, that is with joyous creativity, and I use that phrase advisedly, that's binah, with joyous creativity, you will now bring into realization and manifestation the beauty and the glory of what it is to be the true humanity, the true human being, which is Yisrael. That's when he has ended the struggle and he gets the name.

And then we saw this wild thing and that is that he from there--before we get back to the story of Leah and Rachel, which is so crucial--he from there goes and makes currency. Vayichan pnei hair. And it makes a great deal of sense.  Because when you have currency, you have an abstraction from the circumstance of bartering. And wow! You know what happens, You get to the point where you write a letter on g-mail so you get, you know I had a ceratin question in Torah, and when the guy answers you, you get six advertisements for sites that are dealing with different things in Torah. You write to someone and then cling! you have the whole world at your fingertips of this thing which you mentioned which is important to you. Because there is currency, because you have matbeah, now you have a situation in which you have the enitre world that is relating, really to this particular thing that is motzei chen b'ainecha, that you find particularly attractive and interesting to you. That's what he did when he made vayichan et pnei hair, when he made the chen of the city of Schechem, he made it possible that the entire planet would become available to, to the evil people to,  but to the Tzaddik who knows exactly what he needs in order to further the expression of G-d's will which he has become perfectly and exquisitely identified with. My gosh! Look what that did! That made the possibility of chen to be realized. If you remember the different between chen and yofi, because … the chen is really the place of the Tzaddik who has that kind of clarity and integirity to know exactly what it is that he's meant to rleate to. When an evil person gets access to e-mail and currency, it's the worst, because for them, it's not that the world was created for me to be channelled, but rather, the world is my possessions. Look at all these possessions, getting more and more bloated and egotistical with those possessions. But for Yaakov, when he has the clarity of becoming Yisrael, it's mamash a different story, And that's what allows him to say to Esav, yesh li kol, I have everything I need. It's all right here. And that's what makes is possible for him to want to make currency, to be mtaken the matbeah.

So this is mamash what Shlomo HaMelech teaches, and this is what's problematic about chen, when he says, sheker hachen v'hevel hayofi. What does it mean chen is a lie and yofi beauty is a breath, a vanity, something that is passing by? It's the deepest thing. What is chen? I can't even translate chen into English. It's the craziest thing like in English, a beauty mark, in Hebrew is a nekudat chen, because really a beauty mark is not really a beauty mark, it's a blemish. But a beauty mark is beautiful in the eyes of the person who's seeing it. Ah, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Cut the garbage! Beauty has an absolute standard! We talked about this on Chanukah. beauty has an absolute standard, symmetrical, fit, clear complexion, we all know about this, but that destroys the possibility for right  relationships between people, because the standard has become also the standard for what people are meant to think is meant to be chen.

 But the truth is that the blemish becomes nekudat chen for someone because someone likes the way it looks. Chen has to do with your personal experience to it. Which is real when you have exactly of who you are and what it is you are doing.  Then your wife will have chen, the place you live will have chen, the things you have have chen, and you only keep them if they have chen, because you are integrous [have integrity--DG] enough to know when they are meant for you or when they're not.  And in steps beauty into the picture. Now beauty is a very good thing. But beauty has little to do with relationship. Beauty has to do with truth and what is absolute. And what is a standard that is to be met or not met. Chen is always in the Chumash. Motzei chen b'eynav, lo motzei chen b'eynav, finds chen in his eyes, doesn't find chen in his eyes. It's all relational. Thats why Shlomo Hamelech says, sheker hachen, because sheker is a lie. Why is chen a lie? Because it's not measurable by any set standared. I cannot tell you if this table is motzei chen in your eyes, you have to tell me if it's motzei chen in your eyes. I can tell you if it is yafeh. Because there are ceratin standards for what yofi is. But I cannot tell you if it is motzei chen. It is a very real and crucial point. Because people are always is comparing their mates and their possessions and everything is in comparison, that's why kinah is a result of yofi, which is the world of yefet and yavan, which is just the straight-line kind of television models or cars that fit some--  It has nothing to do with chen, it only has to do with yofi, so everyone is competing and dropping because it's no longer yafeh, because yofi is hevel. Yofi is always passing. Nothing stays yafeh forever. Matter disintigrates. It's hevel, It's like a breath. So chen has no absolute, it's sheker. It's falsehood in a sense, which is the opposite of emet. Yofi is hevel in that it never stays, it's gonna pass. Beautiful today, maybe ten years from now, or however, well he's beautiful in my eyes, So you're talking about chen. That's chen. Very important difference. Money gives you access,--when it's right-used money-- to chen.

What is motzei chen b'eynecha? Now again, if you're an appetite-filled, unclear, grabbing, need-to-be aggrandized and bloated person, so that's dangerous. You don't want that guy having too much money. And he's going to do everything he can to get it. Because he needs more and more and more to satisfy an endless and unsatisfiable [insatiable] desire to feel significant and important. Because the less clarity he has, the less integrity he has, the more he needs to give himself a sense of selfhood and worth. But the more clarity he has, and sensitivity to the exquisite detail of what's shayach and not shayach, of what belongs and what doesn't belong, whatever you give me that's fine, and if you give me money to access more, so then I will build something with it that's appropriate, and has never taken from someone else because I'm lvado, I'm completely alone.

This is why Yisrael is able to only, in a sense, relate to Leah, as we showed last time, that when Yisrael becomes Yisrael --what I just showed you now was right after he becomes Yisrael, named by this other person (or through his internal struggle, or through Esav, or splitting from his identical twin, or his twin brother), so now he has created this currency, …so then when he becomesYisrael as we saw last time, Leah emerges as his only zivug, and Rachel dies. 

But this is the Leah who was, if you remember, the first one to bring hodaya into the planet. As I explained to you in Chanukah, which is the holiday of chen, Leah was the first one to be modeh. Her first three children were about he loves me, he loves me not, etc. She was playing with daffodils. Reuven--G-d sees that I'm suffering; Shimon-- G-d sees that I'm hated; Levi-- wait a minute, is he going to walk with me? He will walk with me. Yehudah, now I'm modeh to G-d. What happened? And Chazal taught us she was the first one to do this. Who is this person? This is the first time in the Chumash that someone has done that. No one has ever done that before. This is the most important thing we do in our spiritual relatinoship with G-d. We do it every morning when we wake up, Modeh Ani. What's going on? She's the first one to do that, the Gemara says (on daf zion in Brachos.) And Rashi says, why? Because now I have more than the givens.  Now I've become unique. The cheshbon was three children to each mother. Four mothers, three children to each mother. Ding. Four. That's me. That's not a mechanism or a function to bring the right number of children into the world. That's something special I've just been given and gifted with. That's my meod. That, we said, is mamon, so to speak--that's my extra. When she got to Yehudah and malchut, kingship, [then her] independence became possible; she no longer looks at her husband as he loves me, loves me not, she now knows exactly, it's a symbolic. I know she's got only one other kid there.

But there's a principle that Chazal want to teach us. That's something just came into the world. That is someone's consciousness that I have something more than someone else.(Or not so much more than someone else-- that would be the Esavian or beautying way to look at it. Not more than someone else. She doesn't say that.)

 She says, yoter m'chelki. More than my portion. Right? I had a certain portion, and my cheleck was supposed to be three. Now I'm in my meod, my more, that's becausehol meodecha, mamoncha, that's my identity. (28:08) There's something about me that's becoming realized as unique and special, that's Leah. Leah brings that consciousness into the world and that is olam habah consciousness. We didn't take this last time. And it's the simplest thing in the world to see this. What are you going to take with you when you leave your body? It will only be your meod. It will only be that which is your unique flame, your unique light, identity, your reality you'll leave that behind. It's your light that you take there to olam habah. Leah is the one who knows olam habah, that's where she lives. So she's the one who brings to the planet this realization of joyous creativity of expression, manifestation and particular identity that is meant to be mine…because olam hazeh is our reality are bumping together, we don't have exactly what's mine, what's yours, what's the common and what's the unique, it's very confusing down here, everyone is trying to buy out everyone else and get their stuff and it's all like contest. And olam habah: forget it, man, there's no kina, no tacharut, there's nothing, there's only what you realized of your unique selfhood in this world. That's what you take there. That's Leah.

And the deepest thing, Chazal teach, is that the consciousness of Leah. They teach it in a mashal about how crucial the clarity about where that comes from is. Because this could be the most egotistical, self-aggrandizing, bloating experience, when it becomes it's all about me. I see Rav Daniel is teaching all about me, I can't wait to get out there. It's all about me becoming myself! That's filth, that's preciously the opposite of what Leah knows. Because Leah is hapam odeh et Hashem. And I'll just tell to you straight up in a mashal, as much as a mashal can be straight up. Chazal say that Rabbi Brechia ben Rebbe Levi taught the following mashal. I'll tell you a story about a cohen. The cohanim get tithes. They go around to the granery, to the threshing floor, and there they're given the tithes. So this cohen goes to someone who's got a kur, a bushel of wheat to give this cohen. He brings out his servants to shlep it out to this cohen, it's a tremendous amount of stuff [wheat] that he's giving him, and the cohen doesn't say anythign to him. So the guy has got these servants shlepping this bushel of wheat down the street, and someone comes out of the next threshing floor and gives him a handful of grains. So he turns to that person and says, thank you. So the guy who gave him the bushel is watching this happen. He says, What just happened? What about me? Why weren't you machzik tovah to me? So he answers him, because you gave me mine. But he gave me his. On this it says, hapaam modeh et hashem. That's the midrash from Bereshit rabah. Astounding. Because what came here is that-- from the gemara all we had was I've gotten more than my portion. She was only self-reflecting. But from the midrash we have an entirely new opening and that is, when G-d gives you your givens. The things that are coming to you, not that we are not to be makir tov, chas v'shalom, we are makir tov that we have five fingers on each hand, we can see, we have bodies, we have minds, thank G-d for all that. But in English, you can't make the proper dinstinction.  Because hodaya is about, thank you G-d, you gave me mine, by creating a human being, basically you have a certain level of entitlement to these things. That's by definition what it looks like to be a human being. Ah, but when You gave me of Yours, that's when You gave me more of my expected portion,  that's when You gave me the possibility for creative and unique and specific expression. That's You, G-d, You mamash gave me of Yours, You made me godlike,.

That's what the parable's about, not just the nimshal of having more than her chelek, she had the realization of this is G-d coming through me now, it's not about me, it's about me being for Him, of Him, this is such an amazing midrash. It's teaching this entire perspective which becomes the other aspect of hod. Because hod is the glorious light-filled expression of a person's particular identity we're seeing when things become manifest. But hod also means to be modeh, it also means to acquiesce, accept, admit. That's funny, the same word means both glorious, light expression, and to acquiesce, accept and admit, because if it has only the one side of glorious expression, then it is without connection to the very One whose very being is that, glorious and unique expression. (36:00) So Yisrael, who has this depth of clarity and Leah who has this depth of clarity, they are the ones who come together.  They are the meeting of the inner reality of each of them in a way in which their uniqueness merges. That's really, in a sense, ultimate zivug, when both members of it are so clear, and then the ultimate of it is when their point of identity is at one with one another. The thing that makes them light up, the thing that makes them uniquely expressed, is at one with one another, it's at full complete identity with each other, that's already the highest madrega of the possibility for zivug and it is, as we explained, e'eseh lo ezer knegdo--the lo is gematria Leah.

So it's important to me to add these elements to us. And there's one other thing to add. We'll explore these together shortly. I just want to point one other thing out. And that is a most beautiful thing that happens later. The end of that little piece with Leah it says (37:52) vtam …mledet it says she stops giving birth. But then, couple of pesukim later, she starts giving birth again, So she's kind of finished this chapter of personal realization, she was hated, she 's worried, she's in pain, he will join me, I'm with G-d. Then something new happens… Remember, please, that Yehudah is the origin of malchut. The king will come from him. His name, Yehudah, is yud and heh and vav and heh, it's G-d's name with a daled. The daled is being the fourth child. The daled is a remez to the most important person who is to come from Yehudah, and that is David. And the awareness of real hodaya, man, you just open up Tehillim, and you've got it. That's what he becomes expression of, in clear, divine expression coming through him, Tehillim is like, that's it. If you ask anyone what book in Tanach, yeah, Tehillim, that's Yehuda, but Yehuda, in this hod-like fashion, and in this malchut which now becomes the personality of all of the other elements now becoming integrated and realized as one integrous [intergal--DG] personhood or being or selfhood, when that's done, then Leah has another child.

That's very interesting to me because what happens is we're back in parshta Vayetze, and we're told in chapter thirty that Rachel gives over her shifcha and then Leah gives over her shifcha and then in verse fourteen, Reuven, her first born son goes for a walk and v …chitim.., he finds dudaim in the field and he brings them to Leah, his mom. Rachel says to Leah, give me them, so she says, you've taken my man, you're going to take my dudaim, too? So Rachel says, you can sleep with him tonight. So Yaakov sleeps with her, she goes out and takes him in and this whole thing here, and she says to ki sachor scharticha in verse sixteen, I have hired you out tonight with the duduaim of my son.  Vayishkav ima balayla hu. Then G-d hears Leah she has a fifth child. Who is this fifth child? Well, she names him Yissachar, but if you look in the Hebrew in verse eighteen, so the name Yisasschar is wrongly spelled. It's got two sins, Yisasschar, but you only say Yisasschar, why do you have two? What is that? Why does she call him that? So, she explains, in verse eighteen because I gave my shifcha to my husband. Huh? What are you talking about? You're calling him Yisasschar because you hired him, right? Because you sachor scharticha. That's what she said, come on, own up. But instead, what she said is, the reason I had this child is because I gave him to be with my shifcha. What are you talking about? I believe she is telling us about the world of sachar, about reward. You see, in the overt world of course, sachar scharticha, my hiring you is why I got this child. But in the secret world, the reason why I got this child is because I gave you up. That's what she says. More deeply, I gave me up I gave myself up. I turned over, that Yaakov should be with my shifcha. That's not a nice thing for a woman, she has given herself up. There's a self-abnegation there. It's gonna come through her, not me. Hmm. That becomes the world of sachar, and I'll tell you in the simplest way. That clarity which takes a person to his chelek in olam habah, will only be rewarded with sachar there, if the reward wasn't taken here. If while I was doing it, it was about me getting the pleasure of whatever, the pleasure of ego, or living a meaningful life, or whatever subtle pleasures.  That's a really subtle one, that's a hard one to give up. But there are more or less subtle measures of how much you are doing it because of your outer reality, and how much are you doing it because of your inner truth that you're allowing to be realized through you.

So she says, I did this one, not for me. Because I gave up myself, now I have sachar. And that's literally what Yisachar is, yesh sachar…So hear this: She got the Yisachar, by virtue of dudaim. Dudaim are Davidyaim, it's David. The midrash points it out, I have to find it again. Davidaim, in other words, that dodaim, which is loving, is the dudaim, is the dod, which is David. (I guess it got polluted in English, the dude. But in Hebrew, it's dudaim. I don't know if that's true, I just made that up.) So David is this is the world of the sachar that only malchut can know when the expression is one in which is G-d flowing through rather than it being about me. (47:00)

You see here, this is exactly what she says, this sachar here, you know how you get sachar? And Chazal actually say the yesh is actually the amount of sachar that a person gets, it's a funny kind of Chazal, they say, l'hanchila…yesh …mamale, that I will give an inheritance to those who love Me. What's the inheritance of yesh? That I will give you an inheritance of reality. Where? Chazal say in olam habah, that's where you get the yesh, Here that's not where you get the yesh. Here she says, yesh sachar--by virtue of my not having taken for myself here.

So what I'm doing with you today is I'm seeking to fill out a picture for you of why the zivug of Yisrael and Leah are so united, it's so intimate. But the deeper picture of what I wanted us to have really, is how that when it happens for a person when that integrity is realized and when that clarity is had-- of that particular light that is meant to be spoken through me-- so that is the deepest and greatest intimacy with G-d. So much that G-d says to Yaakov, you're a G-d, and the opposite of that is the nachash, who also tells them the same thing.  That's why the Rabbis say, if you don't bow down at Modim , then when you die, your spine turns into a snake. Huh? Bleh! Why? Because bowing down at Modim is an indication that I understand that the deeper level of Modim is acquiescence to, is acceptance in front of You, G-d, not giving up my creative expression and uniqueness, but rather that it's flowing through me as an expression of Your deepest will, and my greatest identity with You in joyous creativity which is binah, that's probably the best translation I can think of of aym habanim smaycha. Joyous creativity, that's binah. If you don't bow down, you stand up, then you belong to the other side. But it's not that he [the snake] was saying something completely wrong, he was just doing it out of separation rather than connection. That's all. If you eat from this tree then you will be like G-d. Why? Because you will be able to relate to what's motsei chen b'eynecha and what's not. 

I'm going to put that aside for now, but the point is, this is a very deep intimacy with G-d and it becomes when the relationship is one of chen between us. And it's the deep rachamim which is the rachamimn which Yaakov expresses. Chazal say he is the mavriach hatichon, he is the center pull and the center life that flows through all. To bring us back to what we touched upon last time, that he is the center life and the center line of it all, mavriach hatichon the bar that goes through everything and unites it all,  that's the unity consciousness that unites it all. Here we're looking at it from the realization of selfhood and personhood that allows for that. It's not going to be some amorphous cloudy, thing, just like the Chazal says, a person that says hallel every day is a blasphemer, Macharef umgadef. (51:55)  He's like, you're making fun of G-d when you say hallel every day. People in their overdrive-religiosity, can't take what I was saying before that like, of course, you're supposed to give thanks that you have two hands, two arms, ten fingers well, what do you mean? Of course, you give thanks.  No, let's make distinctions, because if we don't have distinctions, then you will not have intimacy as we've learned. We only have intimacy because we have clarity of distinctions. So there is a distinction between hakarat hatov, which is I've been given what everyone has, thank you, and hodaya, which is my special thing, this is where you gave me Yourself, G-d, right? That's deep. That only happens there when there is that realization. Am I repeating myself? I am not sure if I am just saying the same thing over again. Just checking in. (Circles of righteousness) Holy circles.

So I'd like to share with you a piece of Chassidus in which the Baal HaTanya expresses Yaakov and Yisrael and aspects of them. I just want to begin something here. There is a verse in the Parshat Bilaam: (54:41) That verse talks about Yisrael and Yaakov because they both remain. So here: …it remains extant even though Yaakov has had his name changed to Yisrael. Nevertheless, Yaakov and Yisrael remain names that he is called by…and the truth is they are two different aspects in which we relate to G-d. It's the aspect of being a servant and an aspect of being a son, a child. (Quoting the Hebrew verse)…As the verse says, hear me, Yaakov my servant….

See, Yaakov 's experience of life and the so-to-speak externality of our living is the aspect of servant. We've been commanded to perform certain actions, and we are all, in a sense, sort of in common with that. There's things that need fixing, things that need tuning and we're all responsible to make sure for the maintenance of the planet, for the maintenance of society, etc. A servant in his relation to his master, is always being given things to do because there is always what to do. A child, though, will also be given things to do by his father, by his mother, but they are giving him these things to do, but not because they are things to do, but because they want the child to grow. Think about it. The real deep intent of a parent with a child. Look, maybe they need some farmhands around the house, or to get things cleaned up, etc. okay, so you might be functioning with your relationship with your children as servants.

There are servants on various levels. There are servants on the level of, there is something that needs to get done, or there might be servants on the level of I need to feel good about myself, so I need you to look good. That's also a child servant, like you're my little jewel, Henry. What do mean, you're my little jewel? Yeah, I like wearing you on my collar. You better look good. That's where parent-child relationship is one of servant. That's where it goes wrong. But it can be right also, if things just have to get done, but you really don't want a servant for that, so to speak. But then, there's when you tell your child because you want your child to grow and you know if she doesn't clean the dishes, then what kind of person is she going to turn out to be?. And a deep loving parent with their child will always have that as their primary intention and desire, I want you to become the most you can become. I want you to become fully realized.  So I'm telling you what I'm telling you because on the chitzoniut, it needs to get done, on the outside aspects. But on the pnimiut, it's because I love you and care about you and want you to become the most you can be. That's the real kavanah of parent-to-child [relationship].

So there is also the bechinut, of so-to-speak of G-d with us, which is Yaakov, which is listen, there is work to be done. The world needs people to take care of it. Get moving. But the pniumiut of Yaakov is through the relationship of G-d to us as ben, as child. Do you know why there is so much work to be done? Because I want you to go out and be the most realized and unique realization of what your particular being is that you could possibly be. That's when I flow into a realization through you, that's why Yisrael's name has G-d's name in it. Because that's also really when a paren'ts flows through the child. Their love. Because really, that's what's coming to expression. We can all own up to that--it's all about us flowing through the child. Of course we want the child to be the most he can be because that's our growing. And when the child directs that and knows exactly where to take that, wow. So then even though, so to speak, on the external vision of it it doesn't look exactly what it is we were looking for. But in the internal we say, wow, nitzchu li banai, my children have defeated me. That's good, I like that. Because, b'pnimiut, they're really bringing out something so deep that you or I wouldn't be able to realize in effect were it not been for them and their particular and specific place.  That's Yisrael. Ani bchori, my first born child.

(Questions. I'm an older generation and a lot of what you said to me reaffirms a lot about getting oler. You reach a stage where you better understand yourself, and that brings you closer to G-d because it's accepting who you are and the beautiful parts of yourself. My husband just retired, we were talking about well, what are you going to do with your time now? He says, "I'm going to throw away a bunch of stuff." He doesn't owe himself to his job anymore. He's looking forward to it. As you said, you can't do that unless you know what you need. That's interesting too, that a job can make you need a lot of things you don't really need. My question is when Leah had the fifth child, was this after Yaakov had his battle? ) Before. (So she reached the spot before Yaakov did that she was comfortable with herself and she was OK)

That would be one way to describe it.  …I like it when you ask, it's not like I know all the answers.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Synopsis: Yaakov's internal struggle, going back for the pachim ketanim and the idea of bchol meodecha

Episode Transcript:

Last time we met, we were revealing aspects of Yaakov, who became for us the image of someone whose experience of life is as one organism in which G-d is flowing with life through it all, and his love of G-d is one in which is described in Chassidut as an attachment to G-d which knows atah mechayed kulam: that You are the One Who gives all life. And that experience of G-d as One who is giving all life is the experience in which, in a sense, all belongs to G-d, but not in the same way in which we saw with Yizchak, in which all is indeed G-d, there is no other than Him. The revelation in which He's absolute and unique, in which there's no other existence at all that was the revelation of Yizchak.

                With Yaakov, it was the revelation of what's called echad, in which the multiple parts and aspects of a diverse creation are all unified together in one organism, in one unity in which all is participant really in one body, and we saw that was reflected in the way in which Yaakov is known by Chazal to be the one whose beauty is like the beauty of Adam HaRishon. And that beauty which is the beauty of Adam HaRashon, is really the depths of what beauty is, because beauty as it's experienced through Yaakov is very deeply related to truth, because the nature of the truth-aspect of beauty is very important. And we saw that there is actually a struggle between an attitude towards truth, on Chanukah when we met, which is that "aesthetic" is some absolute orientation, meaning that it is touching the fiber of the way things are, you know, and so if something is beautiful, it's aligned with that, and if it's not aligned with that, it's not beautiful. With an experience of life as having ultimate representation or not having ultimate representation.

                We'll leave the issues around beauty aside. Yaakov is the one who is able to -touch all of reality by virtue of it being interconnected as one being. And the beauty of Yaakov, the Rabbis say, is the beauty of Adam HaRishon before the fall into the chet, in which Yaakov is actually a personification of Adam HaRishon, and the Rabbis say it also when Yaakov asks for Rachel and he says, give me my wife and I will be with her. So there Rashi says, that's no way for people to talk, who talks like that? Even the scoundrals in the shul don't talk like that? You're talking about getting married, or are you just talking about sleeping with her? So the way the mefarshim explain that is because Yaakov was on such a high madrega of being not divested of body, but experiencing body in a way that Adam HaRishon experienced body, in which the organisimic interconnectedness of all was so apparent, that for him to sleep with her, that's the lashon of zivug, of boah, of I will come into her. Because why? Because we're all one body, so I am really going to be merging with her, it's not really in the sense of a sexual impulse, it means I'm really going to come into her.  And he was totally innocent in the way he was saying that. When a scoundral in the shuk says it, it's a scoundral in the shuk saying that. But when it's Yaakov saying it, it's a reflecting of this experience of us all essentially being one.

                So we explored aspects of that and I want to continue into one other element which happens in the story of Yaakov which is crucial for us to understand the nature of his relationship with G-d. If you remember, we also had some primary exploration of the way in which Yaakov relates to money and creative output. And what we're referring to later becomes revealed the beginning of the story of Chanukah and with our battle with Yavan. And so we can take something out of this that we are meant to take out of Chanukah, aspects of this which we discussed on Chanukah and which I want to continue to bring out about.

                I think we explained that there are three ways of loving G-d. There's vahavta et Hashem elokecha bchol lvavcha, bchol nafshecha and bechol medoecha. And we explained that the way of loving G-d bchol lvavcha is the way of loving G-d of Avraham, with all of his heart, including his yetzer harah. The way of Yitzchak is bchol nafshecha: he gives up his life, there's nothing other than G-d, and the way of Yaakov was bchol meodecha, afilu hu notel et mamoncha. Your love of G-d will be revealed in your willingness to sacrifice even your mamon. Now what would that be? That in sacrificing your mamon would be such a high and profound experience of something that so deeply belongs to you that to give it up is a demonstration of your love of G-d. If your experience of life is one in which you are organismically connected to those things which are your extension, your meod, which is your creative output. And those things which belong to you, so you're experiencing your connectedness to them, not as something which is a tangent, or other, outside of you, separate from you, reality. You are in that. It's like someone has a truly dear creative expression of something which they have made,  their life is in that. And that's deeply and profoundly connected to them such that they experience that as being one with them. This is why the Rabbis interpret meod, as having to do with money is also the letters A-d-(a)m, because Adam Harishon experiences all as being what belongs to him and therefore is a very part of his life.

                This is the deep meaning of what the Rabbis teach us in the mishnah in Sanhedrin, when they ask, Why was man created alone? And the answer: well, so everyone would be able to say, bishvili nivrah haolam. What is that about? Because the first man was created alone, that means that everyone can say bishvili nivrah haolam? I mean, I wan't created alone, there were lots of other people in the room with me. There were lots of other people being born there with me, so why does man's being created alone indicate bishvili nivrah haolam? And more, Yaakov is the only one who we're told he is left alone, lvado. And that's a crucial depiction, because G-d says, lo tov heyot adam lvado, in the beg of Bereshit. It's not good that man be alone.    And yet, when Yaakov is about to meet Esav, so something happens, a crucial event in Yaakov's history. Yaakov, after he prays to G-d and sends the gifts and prepares to go to war regarding Esav, so then Yaakov gets up in the night in chapter thirty-two, verse twenty-two, he gets up in the middle of the night, takes his two wives, his two shvachot, his eleven children, and takes them across the Jabok. And he takes them and moves them over the riverbed, and he takes all that belongs to him. Vyivater Yaakov lvado- but he remained alone. Vyavek ish imo ad alot hashachar. And there was a man that fought with him until the dawn came. …And he saw that he could not defeat him…so he touched him in the hollow of his thigh, and the thigh bone became dismembered in the middle of this wrestling. And in the middle of this mysterious scene, Yaakov is described as the one who is left lvado. So we really have Adam Harishon not only before the chet, but even before he has woman separated out from him. He's completely alone. Assuming he's alone, and again, he's the only one who is lvado since back in lo tov lyhot ha Adam lvado, something that allows him to be lvado. Now, what's worse is exactly what the problem that G-d says is the problem of the lvado, happens to Yaakov. And what I'm referrring to is as Rashi explains, Why is it that… so people might do something very bad, they might say that just like there's one G-d up there, so there's one G-d down here. People get confused. So he must have an ezer knegdo--eheseh lo ezer knegdo,--and then everyone will see that he's like all the other creatures of the planet. That's what Rashi speaks in the second chapter of Bereshit, where that verse is.

                (14:47) But let's look at chapter thirty of Bereshit, when Yaakov comes home to the city of Shchem, which is in Canaan, he's come back from padan Aram. …. He does something chendik to the city, he encamps there or does something chendik, we'll see how these things are related. …He buys a field there where has put down his tent. He pays the price. …He makes a mizbeach there….And he called him G-d, the G-d of Israel. Whoa, what's going on here? Who called who? Who's talking to whom? So Rashi on that verse says, not that the mizbeach, the altar, is calling him Elokei Yisrael, but rather that G-d is with him, so he called the mizbeach according to the miracle He has done. G-d has been my G-d--He has saved me.

                But then Rashi says, You know what? The Rabbis have a different take on this verse. They say, that G-d called Yaakov an el. That G-d called Yaakov "G-d." Whoa! So on this the Rambam says, Why would G-d call Yaakov G-d? What kind of G-d is He/he? So on this the Rambam says, there's actually a medresh on this that I can't reveal to you because it's a deep secret, but it says that what this is actually teaching is that G-d in Mesechet Megillah, calls Yaakov kel, and in Bereshit Rabbah, it teaches that Yaakov said to G-d, You are G-d in the Heavens and I am a G-d on the earth. Oh no! He says, Yeah, this is a remez to what it teaches, that the image of Yaakov is engraved on the kisay hakavod--on the throne of glory--meaning apparently, that Yaakov indeed is some kind of perfect represenation of the divine in the world. You in the elyonim, and me in the tachtonim, and oh my gosh, this is exactly what Rashi said would happen if someone was left alone! When it says, lvado, so it actually happened and it was none other than Yaakov that did it? What's going on here? What does this mean that Yaakov experienced himself as the divine?

                Now understand that Yaakov became alone when he went back to save his money, possessions, his pachim ketanim. On Chanukah we talked about that when he went back for the pachim ketanim, he risked his life, because, as Rashi says that Tzaddikim don't steal, they only have what is truly theirs. And in only having what is truly theirs, it is so dear to them, even more than their bodies are. Because their bodies, well on a certain level to them, compared to what they have come to realize in their lives, money being an abstraction or representation of that, their bodies are like dead matter to them in comparision to what they have creatively realized of their lives.  And it's become a life force of theirs which has become embodied by their creative output, and they have their life force in those things which has been made by them. This sounds awfully godly.

                If you experience G-d as the One Who is the life force that maintains all that is, and it's all one organism in which G-d's life force is running through it, so, my life force is also moving through those things which I am a participant, a creater of. This is a very deep consciousness, which is one that leads to Yaakov being, in a sense, being alone. What does it mean to be alone? It means that it's all one organism, so there's nothing outside of me. What, there's something outside of me? I mean, we're all living in one divinely enlivened reality as one body which is called in Kabbalah as Adam Kadmon who becomes realized in flesh as Adam Harishon, who the Rabbis say indeed included the entire universe. And what the Rabbis teach us, we accept, so Adam Harishon had that same glorious beauty that Adam Harishon had. [You said that, that not my editing-DG]

                He's going back for these pachim ketanim. He's left alone. He's now realizing life as being one organism. And that is a consciousness that leads him to relate to what has become his, belongs to him, as being at one with him. So get this fascinating and deeply troubling phenomennon. So there he is, alone. Vyavek ish imo… He's alone, but someone's fighting with him. But how is it that he's alone, but someone's fighting with him? So the midrashim indicate that what's happening for Yaakov is actually an internal struggle that's goingon. He's fighting with himself., He's fighting with two aspects of himself. In fact, the Rabbis say, Vyavek…(24:10) that this avak, went all the way up to the image of Yaakov which is on the kiseh hakavod, so that now, this avak that is covering the kiseh hakaovd, is the same dust that is being kicked up by the struggle that he's having with this person.  So that it's all in one cloud, basically, of dust. It's a struggle that's happening while Yaakov is alone. Yes, and yet there are midrashim that say, oh, come on. I'll tell you who he was fighting with. He was fighting with Esav--Esav's spiritual manifestation. He was fighting with Esav's angel. So was he alone? Was he with Esav? 

                What happens to Yaakov? The verses tell us that what happens next is that he asks what the angel's name is. The angel says: we don't have names. But you've got a name. --Yeah, I've got a name, my name's Yaakov. --No, not any more.   I mean, I don't have the authority to change you name, but as a result of what's happened here, you're going to have a new name now. Your new name is Yisrael. --Why? --Because you have lorded over G-d. (24:54) Ki…elokim, vatuchah, maybe that sounds too radical, so you lorded over an angel of G-d. Well, later we may find that it may not be so entirely radical since Yaakov is being called "G-d" by G-d. So there's something in that name which may be more than we're used to relating to.

                But now, the strangest thing happens. Do you remember when the Rabbis say that Leah became ugly, or her eyes became soft, because she was crying so much about having to become the wife of Esav, She didn't want to become married to Esav, so she became married to Yaakov in answer to her prayers, Baruch Hashem. But in pniumiut, she's supposed to be the wife of Esav. Now take a look at this bizarre episode in Vayesehev, the next parshah. Chapter thirty-five, verse nine. So G-d appears to Yaakov. He's now returned from Padan Aram, and He blesses him. So this is how is going to be the realization of how Yaakov gets his new name. So G-d says to him, Shimcha Yaakov? Lo yikareh od shimcha Yaakov, ki im yisrael. Your name is not going to be called Yaakov anymore, it's going to be called Yisrael….and you'll have lots of children, this land is your land… and there Yaakov builds there that mazevah, as he said he would, and they're on their way to Efrata. Rachel starts giving birth, she has difficulty giving birth, and in the trial of giving birth, her myaledet says, don't worry, it's a boy, and as she dies she says Ben Oni--this is the son of my suffering-- but his father called him Benyamin.

                Rachel died there, on the way to Bet Lechem. This is all in one parsha--interesting. But that I mean graphically, the way the Chumash is divided. We have a paragraph here. The paragraph begins with Yaakov coming to this place Bet El, getting renamed and then Rachel dying. I realized a most astounding thing.for the first time at Chanukah. Yaakov loves Rachel. But Yisrael has no connection to Rachel at all.  Yisrael is married to Leah. And so as soon as Yaakov becomes Yisrael, Rachel's dead. No more Rachel, only Leah. He fights this, In fact, we have in the next verse: he tries to maintain his connection to Rachel by moving his bed in to the tent of the concubine who was Rachel's concubine. But Reuven says, We'll have none of this. Reuven sees right through it and he forces the issue, according to Chazal.

                But the point is: that woman who is the woman of the secret life, that woman who is the woman of olam habah, that woman who is the bechinah of eheseh lo knegdo. Meaning, there's ezer, there's knegdo, and there's lo, lamed vav. This it the third madrega, and it's one that Yisrael has of utter and complete belonging. Of living again as one organism. It's the secret life that underlies the overt level of separateness, because in the external reality indeed Yaakov is Yaakov, and he's worked hard, and he's loving Rachel, who's the alma digalyah, the revealed world as we saw in the Zohar, and he's needing to overtake Esav, and grabs his heel, and he's behind him, I'm going to go slow, and eventually I'm going to get there, and all the things we saw about Yaakov and process and externality and a reality in which things are gradually unfolding.

                But it's Yisrael who truly lives the secret life which underlies all of reality and makes it echad. So by him it's not ezer, and it's not knegdo, which have to do with Avraham and Yitzchak, as we learned. Here it's the pasuk, eheseh lo, because lo is gematria Leah. She's completely belonging to him in the same way he experiences his possessions. Not in a demeaning sense-- we hear "possessions" and we immediately think domination and domineering. It's not about that. It's real belonging. It totally belongs to him. They have actually become one. He has become lvado. He has achieved more than the androgynous condition again. (What?-DG) That is something which Yisrael only has with Leah. This realization of echad. By the way, it is Yisrael who we speak to when we say, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad. And here is a very deep thing: the very first person who said that was Yaakov.

                Actually there are two places where that is spoken. One place, when Yaakov meets Yosef for the first time in twenty-two years. It says, Yosef cries on his neck, and it doesn't say that Yaakov is crying, so Rashi says, What the heck was he doing? Why wasn't Yaakov crying? So Rashi answered, he was saying, Shema Yisrael. Wait, who's talking to who? Shema Yisrael, listen up, Yisrael: Hashem Elokeynu, Hashem Echad. Who's talking?

                Verse twenty-eight in chapter forty-six, Yehuda is sent ahead of him, to Yosef, to show the way they get to Goshen. Yosef bridles up his merkavah, gets on it to go to Yisrael aviv, he appears before him, falls on his neck and starts to cry. And Yisrael says to him, I'm going to die now that I've seen your face, now that I know you're alive. What? I'm going to die now? Maybe that's why he was saying Kriyat Shema, because he knows he's going to die now. Well, that actually makes sense. Because the other place where Shema Yisrael appear, is in Vyechi. It says that Yaakov wanted to gather together his children and tell them what it's going to be at the end of time. So….Come together, and I'm going to tell you about what's going to be at the end of time. And then, nothing happens. He doesn't seem to have anything to say. He starts blessing them. Reuven, you're this… what happened? What a let down! It was about to happen--that's what we all want to know about, right? Nothing. (38:49) Well Rashi starts explaining. You know what happened, right? He wanted to. But then it disappeared. He thought he was going to have the revelation and it didn't come. However it is. So, he started wondering, hey, what's the deal with my kids? Did they also believe in one G-d? Maybe one of them has gone bad and that why G-d is blocking the revelation right now. He can't see the end of time. So he starts looking at them. Maybe there's a shemetz psul, something wrong with them.

                So you know what they say to him? They say, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeynu Hashem Echad. Listen, Yisrael, Dad, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad, only one G-d. So that's interesting. He's the first one to say it according to Rashi, and here we have them saying it to him. And you know what he said? Oh, Baruch Hashem, Baruch Shem Kvod Malchuto lolam vaed. That was his response. That's why we say that too. Because we're like the children of Yaakov when we say that. Shema Yisrael, Hey Yisrael. You're still here hanging on, one G-d. And then we also say his repsonse: Baruch Shem kvod Malchuto L'olam vaed.

                Now listen to this. Baruch shem kvod malchuto l'olam vaed, is the letters if you take the first letters of these words, b'Shechem Lo. Baruch Shem Kvod, that's the b'Shechem, and L'olamVaed, that's the lo. We can't go into the whole story of Shechem right now, but suffice it to say that there is a remez here to what the Navi say, what the prophet teaches, that in the end everyone is going to be worshipping G-d b'Shechem echad. In the end, everyone is going to be worshipping G-d b'shechem lo. It's all His. Schechem is like a katef, but Shechem is also a portion, and it's all going to be revealed as His portion. It's all G-d's reality. So that his repsonse then to them saying Shema…echad, is him saying Baruch shem… His malchut is revealed, his name is revealed (in?) all. Forever. So there really was a revelation of the end but it's the end that is here in the present. Because what is the end which is…(This line needs to be recovered) The realization that it's all G-d's manifestation in which His life flows through it all and it's all one body really. But we're used to saying that in space but it's also true with objects. So it's all one body. And so his children say to him, you know what, Yisrael, the ketz you want to be revealing? It's right here. It's all one reality, whether you're looking over time, whether you're looking over space. It's all G-d's so-to-speak body, his manifestation, His name. So he really did reveal the ketz.

                The Zohar says, don't think that he wasn't able to reveal the ketz. But how was he revealing the ketz? Rashi says, when he saw that when all of their disparate realities, oh man, did it all go wrong? Where is the echad? So they said, remember all those twelve stones that became one under your head? Because you're experience was of G-d's life force flowing through it all, here we are. We're the living reality of that. That's called knesset Yisrael, Here we are. Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad.  Ah, Baruch Shem kvod malchuto l'olam vaed. The Shechem, lamed vav, the Leah, the alma d'casa become revealed there as olam habah, literally, olam habah, as the Zohar teaches, Leah is olam habah. That's what he meant when he met Yosef.  This makes it a little more personally oriented. Because when he met Yosef, imagine that scene. Must be shattering-- twenty two years his son is gone, his son is dead. He thought the whole thing he was in the world for was shattered. No twelve children. The twelve tribes are gone. There's only eleven of them. Is this rife between his sons irreparable? What's going to be the end of me?

                Comes Yosef. What happens when he sees Yosef. My G-d, it's all one. All that crazy stuff when he was gone and away, and they fought, and they tried to kill him, and in the end they sent him away, and he became the viceroy, and now he's going to keep us all alive? Wow, And that, by the way, become Yosef's consciousness, because Yosef and his brothers in this week's parshas, his brothers come to him and can't talk to him and Yosef says, Listen, don't be afraid, you know why? Because G-d has sent me before you to keep you alive. What's that consciousness? That is utter and complete forgiveness. Because it's all been one life working itself out. What, am I going to get angry at my toenail now? It's just like walking me to where I need it to go   You people are all fine. You're all just part of the same body unfolding itself.

                Yosef inherits that vision, that's really why he's called the ben zkunim. He's the son of Yaakov in his old age. Come on, Yaakov in his old age? He still has a lot of years ahead of him when he gives birth to Yosef. So Rashi says no, because he's the one who has the wisdom of Yaakov. It becomes revealed in him in that realization of the oneness which allows him to give full forgiveness to his brothers, saying, it's just one life working itself out, it's really not about you and not about me as separate entities. 

                So Yaakov achieved that awareness when he met Yosef. That's why he said, Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad.  He's teaching himself to be fully realized as Yisrael and now he's become so at one with the life of G-d that flows through, all that he can say is: Yes, You G-d are the G-d in the upper worlds, I am the G-d in the lower worlds. That doesn't mean he rules over the lower worlds, come on. That means that he's so at one with G-d's life in the lower worlds, that hey, is there something between me and You, G-d? It's Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem echad. It's one. I'm not losing the seeing of my children as twelve separate children and I will give them each a bracha. (47:33)

                But as it says at the end of the brachos that he gives them, they're all one, he doesn't see them as separate, even though they have different realities. That's lo. That's eheseh lo. It's not a loss of otherness. And it's not a melding into completely unified reality in which the different functions in place of each is not being realized. But rather, the different functions and places are being realized, but they're all being experienced as being part of one organism. You know your heart is different from your elbow, is different from your eye, is different from your ear, but they're all one body. That's not the unity consciousness in which it's all one, nor is it the obliterating of there is nothing but Him. But rather, it's I'm alone. But not a lonely alone. I'm the most together alone I can be. So it becomes the realization of not the lo tov liyhot adam lvado but yivater ish lvado and the yivater is a remez to the meod. Vayivater. it's like he's left over. There's more in the reference to the meod which is his relationship with possessions . And so this produces kadosh Yaakov, who lives in full kiddushin with all, in full relationship with all. It's so intimate. 

                The Mesilat Yesharim describes in one of the most beautiful passages in the book in which he describes what the kadosh is like, (Kadosh is a reference to Yaakov in the Navi) and he says there you should know that there's an experience of life of the kadosh in which everything that he uses of this world, he sees as being in connection and in communion with G-d's sanctity, and therefore all the stones joined together by Yaakov because he is always attached to the realization of G-d's greatness and life in the world, so everything that he touches in this world is an experience of the godly life which is in it. And so there is nothing that he touches, he goes on and explains.                 Mesilat Nesharim, chapter twenty-six, he tells us, (51:19), the meaning of sancity, he's so in communion with his G-d he never separates from Him. Everything he touches turns to gold, so to speak, everything he touches is divinity for him, they all are raising up their reality to G-d. He's touching it in it. (He's touching their divinity as he touches these things in their physical manifestation--DG) He doesn't come down when he touches them, he raises them up because he's in attachment with G-d and his contact with them. Everywhere he walks, everything he eats, everything he touches is experienced like that. Now, I believe that's Yisrael. That's the Yisrael of him. And that what it means that Leah's the secret life. That she is the revelation of how all that is is an organism within which G-d's life is flowing and my life is flowing… This is why, when Yaakov becomes Yisrael, Rachel disappears and only Leah remains. And at this point, we have, in a sense, a reconnecting with the life of the child in the womb of the mother in which the child is at one with the mother as it says " ubar yerech imo." Chazal say, fascinatingly the child is like the thigh of the mother when the mother is holding child is in embryo. The thigh! Gee, wasn't that what malach touched on Yaakov? It has to do with the thigh.  Why it has to do with the thigh is because the thigh is what in the Zohar is called "gufah" It looks like it's outside the body. Like your body ends here, like at the end of the torso, and you've got these legs dangling there. They look like they're something outside your body. No, no, they're part of your body. The malach is trying to push them apart. That's the fight. Am I a separate entity or am I one organism with him? Am I like the thigh of mother in the womb of her? Or am I some separate reality, like this other side of me is trying to convince me? But what he achieves in the battle there within himself and with Esav which is that other side of himself, and that's why, after he defeats the angel of Esav, which is the consciousness of separateness  which is what Yaakov was holding onto the heel of.  When he defeats him, so he gets Leah as his wife, who's the exact knegdo, the exact opposite of what Esav teaches, and now he can really be married to her, as he could not have been before.

                (Questions: The thigh is the strength of man?) The thigh, Chazal say, symbolizes money.  Mamon is l'raglam, is strength, gevurah. (Question: The thigh, the horse, people to take pride in?) The Rabbis teach that when this other side of him hit the thigh, so Yaakov lost control of the money of the world. Money becomes a very crucial issue from that point in time. Very timely. I'm happy to explore this for just a few minutes. In his going back for the pachim ketanim so he's actually not relating to money as power, he's relating to mamon as that which has been my creative expression. It's not power money, it's what belongs to me. So there's a midrash that says that at that point, he lost power money (It says he lost "power money"?) (Laughing) Well, no, they really didn't say it like that. The ruling over the world through mamon. Yosef regains that. I have to look it up, B"H.

                See, money is a whole subject involved, and use of mind. There's a lot going on there. Money is really in a sense, the first abstraction. Money is a unifier.  We're used to experiencing money as being a divider. And that's what happens when people get greedy and start hording money for its own sake. But the deep truth is that money is the unifying force for the planet. It's quite amazing. The Rabbis actually teach that money began with Yaakov at Shechem. When it says Vayichan et pnei hair, after his battle with Esav's angel, and his battle with himself, he encamped in front of the city. Rashi says he made it chendik. He did three things for them. He made for them shuks, he made for them places to wash, and he made for them coinage. Meaning that no more barting. They were actually thrilled that these Bnei Yisrael had showed up, because the midrash says they had a lot of manufacturing but they didn't have anyone to sell it to.

                So enter the Beni Yisrael, and we got this new big market now. What's the new big market? Yaakov and his children (inaud.) (1:01:03) Rashi says, we're going to make a lot of money here. But he says, it's not going to work without coinage. Let's abstract objects into their, so to speak, life-force. And that's what mamon is, it's abstracted into its life force  and so now that I have this ten-shekel coin, which I earned by talking to you for an hour or however, so now, I can take that life force and I can buy myself a package of mentos or a clementina. Really? And that's what happened? Yeah. It became abstracted into value, and it enters into the world of mind. And now that it enters into the world of mind, I can reapply it into some other object. It's the great unifier.  And it gets more abstracted until nowadays… initially it was a coin with some metallic value with the impriture of some Caeser or someone on it, and then that impriture became more valuable than the value of the coin, then not so long ago they said, the heck with the value of it, let's just put on the impriture. And that's when silver dollars go out. But it's the equivalent of some gold that we got at Fort Knox and if you really want it, you can go to the bank and we'll give you a piece of the gold that's in Fort Knox for that coin, or what do you need the coin for, it might as well just be a piece of paper! With a picture of someone on it. Until evenutally you can't even get it out of Fort Knox. Now they're talking, you don't need paper and you don't need coins. You just need pixels on a screen and all becomes one big marketplace. And it's truly marvelous because life force has become completely extracted  or, it's completely horrific when it becomes power. To lord over one another rather than connecting point to interact through.  That's why the real tikkun of money is in the chen, where it says, vayichen et pnei hair. It's in chen. What do you really care about? Don't tell me what you want, that's lording over. What has chen for you? So it could be that you need to work, and then abstract that work into a coin, and then chen, instead of I'll give you a banana if you give me an orange, or hoe my garden. We're going to abstract it now. It could be anything and the expansiveness and connectedness of all that is becomes manifest in money. You can buy anything anywhere. And now it's become impossible. The markets of the world have become tearing because of this. It can be anywhere. There people in China working for nothing producing computers so that these guys in DesMoines are out of work, what's going on there? What does that have to do with me? Well, there's only one life force interconnecting everything, now, isn't it? I don't really look at it that way-- they're taking away my money.

                You can see how this shift is so ready by abstracting, Yaakov introduced that with money. So Esav, you know how you're going to live money? The leg, which represents money  that's Chazal say both in the Zohar and when korach gets killed and everything that's by his legs. So Rashi says, What is everything that's by his legs? That's all his money, he was very wealthy. That's by his legs. Because what stands a person on his legs? Possessions. It's his money. But the pniumius is the legs themselves because it's what's outside you that causes you to walk around from place to place. So Esav or this malach is coming and saying, it's not you, it's separate from you, and you can pick it up and whomp people over the heads with it. Separate from you. That becomes the gid hanasheh. That's going to take a long time Yaakov says, until we come to that realization. But that day is going to come, that there is one G-d.   Vyom ha hu… He and his name will be one. Yihye, Yud-key-yud-key, leaving that aside. And then I'm going to be coming up to Har Seir and you hairy people who think it's all outside. (1:07:15)

                Yeah, it's very relevant now. Everything's teetering because of this crazy and disgusting greed that is the venom of money ultimately abstracted to the point of people not having homes, because they gave them up for money, I guess, I don't know, there are these double, triple, quadruple mortgages, houses people couldn't possibly ever pay for. The whole thing collapsed-it was just greed. It wasn't like the system needed to collapse.  Crazy. And look at the way the tentacles reach everywhere. You wouldn't have that if it were just a bartering world. Scratch my back, and I'll give you a piece of my corn. It limits how many interactions you can have around that.  But now the whole planet becomes like a big brain. With infinite interconnects that are producing the picture of the planet and the interrealitying nekuda is money and mind. I wonder if it had been Yisrael who had been the m'taken mamon. Maybe that wouldn't have the risk of such devolving into what it became. (Yosef came a little close to that…making a system around wealth and distribution..welfare in Egypt)  You're absolutely right and a lot of the playing with the money that Yosef does with his brothers is around that. Do you think it's about the money? Here's your money. Take your money back. Gee. Should we put the money back.. Eh, your money got to me, don't worry. Because money in the hands of people like you is going to become a contortion of the way money in the hands of a man of yesod is. It's probably not going to be connecting for you, it probably will be the point of divisiveness. Here, take your money back. It wasn't about that for me.  Yeah, there's a great deal of teachings about money that Yosef is doing to the Egyptians too. Finally they run out of money.   He's got all the money. (Laughing) Whatever.

                Jews and money, it's no small thing, it's no mystery. It's like ultimate tikkun or ultimate descent. Can blow it or make it.  The goyim have always know that. The money is with the Jews,  Rothschild. Madoff. He's small time; big time damage. (Inaud) Threw it out? Whatever it will be, just didn't own property, (inaud) couldn’t so they just became money people. And it becomes the image of the abstraction because money is the abstraction. It becomes this abstract ghost people that holds the money. It's not simple. Because there's really great tikkun that's embodied there. All these things of great tikkun have the potential for the greatest disgrace.  

                (Questions: Esav and his angel. It's another consciousness. Esav is another aspect of Yaakov. Two aspects of one person) When he gets a new name, he's evolved into a new person) (My question is Esav-oriented. What does it mean that Leah was supposed to be Esav's wife. You haven't talked much about who he is.)

                He certainly complicated the picture. In the Kabbalah, Esav is the ultimate separateness, the ultimate separativity, I don't know if there would be a word like that. Origin of the zayin malchim kadmachim, the seven primordial kings, of which said, I will rule. He's ultimate hierarchical consciousness in which one stands above the other and there is no one unifier. He is like a bunch of hairs in their separate follicles.

(And Leah…) What would it had been had Leah been married to Esav? What tikkun might have occurred? (Or worse, he could have taken the strength of the secret world and destroyed it and abised her and this awful thing).

                It's not until allof the umot haolam share in this realization of Shema Yisrael Hashem Elokeinu Hshem Echad, that tikkun will be achieved. This is what Rashi says, Shema Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu, the G-d who is known only to us to be the force behind all, now, and not by the umot halom, Hashem Echad, in the echad they will all be calling him Shechem Echad, they will all be worshipping Him in one chelek, and calling him by one name. That's how Rashi reads phsat in the verse. So ultimate there is some kind of marrying here, of them to that otherwise, there cannot be full realization of Hashem's name in the world, without the umot halom coming to realize it too.

(It's no big deal that Yaakov's children might get it, but what about Esav?) Shechem is a very significant place. (How do we apply all these Torahs to our political and financial reality today?)

                I don't know that I'm a fully realized human being. I'm far from it, I know that I'm not. There is something about a knowing belonging. It has many hashlachot, certainly greed is not among … kirvah is not one of these… of one who has this consciousness, I wish I did live it, I have glimpses of it.

                How does it come down to the political realities? Should we be whomping our way in there and regaining control in there? Is that what it's about? I don't see it that way. I don’t think it's a matter of using force in any sense. It is a matter of shifting consciousness. It really is. Once the British person in charge of Palestine (Chamberlain?) called Rav Kook in and said he heard that the Jews planned to take down the mosque and put up their Temple, is that the plan? So Rav Kook said when G-d will be revealed and the Messiah is here, the Moslems will take it down themselves.

(Back to the money issue. The thing that's going to get us over ourselves and help us to get to the place of connectness of finances and money is that sense of oneness of Hashem Ehcad?)

I think so, that's what tzedakah is about, that's what finding someone a job is, that's what sharing wealth is about, a consciousness of abundance…

…

(Kabbalah Center: Money. Is the intention G-d or is the intention youself? Are you using G-d for yourself?) These are life works. Is having G-d's name present always, as the one who is mchayeh u…hakol, who is enlivening and bringing into reality all, having the name being something that we can hold and being focused and contemplation on that. That is something that makes the shivyon of all reality alive in a way in which it is all equally his and He is the chariot (Shiviti Hashem lnegdi tamid) Which has the sense of both the placing before and holding equal in His name. But it's l'negdi. That's the Jewishness of it. It's the manifestation of things in their separate isn't G-d. He is enlivening them all equally. But they are alive. They are real. As opposed to Yitzchak consciousness which is also true consciousness, there is only Him. Shviti Hashem involves the negdi, the knegdo of otherness.  And that involves meditating on His name, realizing it in body and in life in what you meet. And it doesn't mean being a pauper either. It's not a sin to desire success and full realization of things we've been given in His service.

                When the focus becomes the mechanism of getting those things. Like Chaya was saying, if I use the mechanism, then it's going to come my way. When the focus is on the mechanism and not on the context--the context being that it is all in His service--that's when things go off, because you're just focusing on the means, and it just becauses mechanical. And that's just about me. That's the leumat ze. Lvado. That's the lo tov liyhot adam lvado, when it's all about me, when it's a consciousness instead of bishvili, that the world is in a relationship with me for me, rather it become haolam sheli, the world is mine. That's an Esav consciousness. That's why Esav hates mother. Chazal say the reason why Rivka never gave birth again is because he tore up her uterus on his way out.  He hates mother.  Because she is the place of embeddedness and consciousness of it's one organism.

Olam Habah is all devoted to him and all His life force flowing through it and you too. So he's the antithesis of that and therefore the antithesis of Leah and we haven't worked out how they are supposed to live together. He's the antithesis of that consciousness of olam habah. That's the depth of what Yaakov basically says to him, you just want olam hazeh,  because you want to own it all. You don't want bishvili, you want to live yesh li haolam, that I own the world, not that the world is for me. See, when the world is for me, in right consciousness, that creates the responsibility of wow, this belongs to me, literally, it's one pathway. We're in a shvil toghether. I'm guiding it and it's evolving by my doing.

(Esav is focusing on the microcosm and Yaakov is following on the macrocosm) It's not just about a bigger picture, it's a different picture.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Synopsis: The "bishvili" consciousness as being dreamed.

Episode Transcript:

So during the break, Chaya pointed out how much of the consciousness of the clal is joined in sleep and dream. And how what’s embedded in reality is found out sometimes when you go to bed. And the embedding  of one and another is something like a mother sleeping with a child, a couple sleeping together, the Zohar actually tells about Yaakov, he was going to sleep there in, as it were, G-d’s bedroom, going to sleep allows him to connect with the pulsating common life of all things. So the Rabbis actually say that here we learn that a couple should turn the light off, ki ba hashemesh. G-d turned the light off. So that kind of intimacy, sleeping, etc. common and connectivity with reality, that’s its own beauty and place to visit to be honest. Just go to sleep, as Chaya suggested…

                But that’s having to do with our connection with the divine. In our connection to one another, also there is a very deep place of work in going to sleep, and that is actually relating to the things happening to you as if it happened to you in your sleep…What happens when you experience life as if you’re asleep? There’s a higher wakefulness that happens. And I’ll tell you what that higher wakefulness is. So the guy scratched my car and walked on by and said, “Yihyeh b’seder, al tidag, ta’azov”, So what would the experience of that be if it was in my dream? If it was in my dream. so that would be a curious thing, so what does that come to teach me? Because when I’m asleep and dreaming him scratching my car and saying “Yihyeh b’seder, al tidag, ta’azov”,  so then I hear a very different voice. I hear what’s happening inside me, or the message being given me from a higher consciousness, saying “Yihyeh b’seder, al tidag, ta’azov” and now all of a sudden it’s a different voice because I’m dreaming it. And the reason is because I’m touching the life force that is the unifying organism life force which is running through all of those dreams I’m having, which is me.

So if bishvili nivrah haolam, so then all of those things that are happening are for me. And one way to contact that is actually going to sleep and dreaming them. I’m not saying that all interaction with life will become a dream, but there is a level of being conscious of those things being made out of a dream. And then what would that teach you, the dream? So the exercise would be to recall a situation, a difficult one, a troubling one, especially if it involves another person or circumstance, and then to sleep on it, and then to dream it, and then to give an interpretation to that dream, and to see what comes up from that.

(Chaya: Just to add the point. Bishvili being the broader story that I’m just a part of. But it’s in dreamtime that we activate the collective unconscious. So the dreams that we dream are part of the story of the whole…To recognize that this is part of the whole. This is the story of all of us. And also for me, I’m thinking, how do I want to go about this visualization? I’m drawn to putting my hand down and allowing my body to rest. I really liked all the material in here about how Jerusalem is about resting. Our bodies are able to give it up and let it rest. Just experience that in your body the connection between the body needing a state of rest and that accessing this place of collective unconscious and this place of the higher consciousness of “all is one” … )

                I’m going to share from Torah from that. In your description of how it’s almost as if in your dreaming of this event or this set of events and it becoming out of order and no longer consecutive as they had been in the present reality, in “real life”, it’s almost sounded like you began to experience yourself as being in someone else’s dream. In other words, this dream here that I’m in, there’s a secret story-- I heard you say-- and that actually might have a different order in it that the overtly experienced story.

There’s another story going on here. There are many bishvili nivrah haolam’s. Even when I’m part of someone else’s bishvili nivrah haolam, I’m still part of my own bishvili nivrah haolam. The dreamer is so perfect in his dreaming, but the disorder of it, I heard you experience as an indication as a different story that you were told in that set of circumstances. This is very deep in the context of Yaakov in his specific relations with Rachel and Leah, because the Zohar teaches that Rachel is the revealed reality, and Leah is the dream. Leah is the covert reality, the secret reality. And this is what the Zohar teaches, that she, Rachel, was so beautiful, but Leah had soft eyes. I’ve seen many interpretations of “soft eyes”, but I’ve never seen why it stands as in contradiction to or in distinction from her beauty until we realize that her soft eyes are like, when a person ceases to see the spirit in a situation, or the spirit of a person, or the aura of a person, or the aura of a plant. “Let your eyes go soft”, the instructions always say. So, letting your eyes go soft: the beauty is not the apparent yafay toar of Rachel, but there is a different subliminal beauty that is present. That’s the inner story of this plant, the inner life of this person which is radiating.

So her soft eyes are like an indication of an embodiment of the dream or the “gone to sleep” reality, and this is why, so ironically, in the story that Yaakov thinks that he is working for Rachel. He’s taken seven years out of his life, volunteering to work for her for seven years—which is a kabbalistic thing, because Rachel is the malchut which comes at the end of all the events, she’s the seventh, the manifest reality. So he says, I’m going to work for her for seven years, but as it turns out he was actually working for Leah….because she’s the secret story. That’s why in the end she goes into the cave with him. She lives with him in death. And Rachel stays in the external reality of the overt story.

A deep thing that the Maharal teaches: at the end of time, like Yitzchak, Rachel is going to come from a whole different perspective. She is going to come to G-d, the midrash says, and she is going to ask for rachamim on the Jewish people. And she says, “I gave up my husband for (inaudible) another woman. And I did it so that she shouldn’t be shamed and embarrassed, and I didn’t have jealousy in my heart. So you G-d, when they betrayed you, shouldn’t you be able to hold that too, like I held that there would be another woman that I’d be sharing Yaakov with? So G-d says to her, okay, you can stop crying. Yesh sachar l’gevulatech. So the Maharal says, Rachel is the embodiment of a lived reality of multiplicity, when the story, so to speak doesn’t fit together. Where all the parts and pieces are not part of one dream; they are all of these different events that are happening, which is how most of us are experiencing life. It’s the overt story. That’s Rachel. She’s olam hazeh, she’s the … galia, the Zohar says. She’s the revealed world. But the revealed world is experienced as many powers, many forces, many lives that are disconnected an unrelated. So because I’m experiencing life that way, I know about shniut, duplication or multiplicity, so I’m telling you, G-d, that’s what they were living. They didn’t experience you in your oneness so readily. That’s why they went after avodah zarah and false (piece/peace). It’s like in life we’re experiencing those things as if they’re real and they’re not. Because they’re just G-d’s life being expressed through them, but only Leah knows that, not Rachel. The Rachel consciousness doesn’t know that. So Leah is the one who knows that, she’s the sleepy one, so to speak, she’s the one with the soft eyes, she sees reality in its blur, where the contours of it are not the definitive features, and so she dreams.

And he meets her at night. Vayhi b’erev. And when the day comes v’hineh hu Leah. The Zohar says. V’ineh hu. Third person. Because he can’t really experience her in the second person, she remains like the third person, as opposed to Rachel, she’s in the first person, atah, you. That’s what the Zohar teaches on daf kuf nun dalet. So she’s like the dream, she’s olam habah, when the hamtakah comes in binah.  The sweetening comes in binah when it’s like olam habah and you see like all this was, what the secret story was, (“Hayinu k’cholmim”—DG) and experience that unification.

                This, I believe, is a secret we didn’t discover about last year, but the verse that says about man finding his wife, eseh lo ezer k’negdo, “I will make him a help contrary to him,” so we talked about the ezer and the k’negdo, but we have not talked about the lo, the lamed vav—it’s totally yours. You realize this life is really your dream. It’s totally yours, and you know that by touching life as G-d’s dream. The common life force behind all things. And the common life force behind all things is living this reality, manifesting this reality that you’re experiencing now for yourself. Because it’s all in His dream, so to speak. And it becomes completely and totally yours. That’s Leah, because the gematria of Leah is lamed vav. Dreaming it. That’s Aym habanim smeachah, the Zohar says, that’s the joyousness, az y’maleh s’choch pinu. (Now you’re mumbling something that you want to talk about and you’re holding back.)

Ezer knegdo.. completely yours and G-d, as it were, is completely yours, and you’re completely yours. It’s like the tamim. I’m not blaming, I’m not accusing any more. I’m not distancing, I’m not disconnecting. That’s the lo, the ezer k’negdo. That’s the level of the or haganuz, of the hidden light that G-d hid away because the reshayim would abuse this consciousness because they would take control of the hidden story. So G-d had to hide it away after thirty-six hours. Which the Bnei Yisaschar, says those thirty-six candles of Chanukah is when the dream comes out for a moment. The dream that we’re dreaming—wow! it can really be!—and then it gets hidden away again. That’s the thirty-six candles of Chanukah, that’s Leah… that’s bachan v’yitchanen lo.. okay, that’s when Yaakov went back…

The point is that a full meeting with reality as it is, that’s what the tamim is able to do.  He touches it all because he’s gone to sleep, he’s touching the dream reality. Now here’s the deep catch. The midrash says that Rachel was very modest. She’s tsnua, and because she was so modest, so Shaul who didn’t reveal that he’d been appointed king was modest, and Esther, who didn’t reveal where she came from, was modest, because they all come from Rachel.  They all came from that line. Mmm. What was her modesty? So the Gemara says, her modesty was, that she revealed the signs. She revealed the signs that Yaakov had entrusted to her, so that he would know that it was her and not Leah. Because the midrash says that she told Yaakov about the plan, so Yaakov said, let’s make up signs a private sign, simanim, between us. So what was her tsniut? That she revealed the simanim to Yaakov. Huh? How is it tzniut that revealed the simanim to Yaakov? So everyone gets very confused by this Gemara. Isn’t tsniut about her hiding something about herself? No, her tsniut is that she hid her sister so that her sister shouldn’t be shamed. She allowed him (not her?—DG) to live that secret life. She covered Leah over by giving her the signs. (Chaya: And her sister’s just a part of herself anyway). I don’t know how much Rachel is that. Maybe.

I just have this image here that she’s hiding Leah so that the secret life can be lived out. Because had the secret life been exposed, then Yaakov would have taken control and [ would have said,] like No! So it has to remain very protected. This is a very deep thing, because people mistakenly try to skip over the Rachel stage of life, living it and experiencing it in all its pain and travail. He talks to Lavan, and he lets him know. You can’t skip that over. He feels the pain and the betrayal, he feels it, it’s all there for Yaakov. If he were to skip that over, [saying]oh it’s okay, it’s fine, that wouldn’t have been the real life. It has to be lived fully. As soon as the secret life comes out, you blow it. Because you can’t live the secret life consciously. And you try to take control of it, trying to explain it. It’s very complicated being married to two women. But that’s what it is, it’s having both. That’s the consciousness of ekah. If you lose the details, if you lose the order of the life, if you’re already in the dream, it’s like holding both, going up and down the ladder…

(Inaudible question) I’d love for you to answer that. It’s ratzo v’shov, I see, I know this person is teaching me something, and I know he’s in my dream, and I know that it’s a dream that G-d is dreaming and I know that it’s His life force that’s maintaining us all at once, I know that. But I also know that I also live in the world of choosing in which I respond to that person, not as my teacher, but as one who needs to be taught. And…to live both of those simultaneously is a truly enlightened state. Like I’m living them both. I’m responding, in the responsiveness of Yaakov…in full responsiveness, but I’m responding in [tsnius?] like I’m not in control of this, I’m living the reality as it is, which is being dreamed by G-d, Who is giving it its life force at every moment. Then you’re in echad. Then you’re in unified consciousness in unity consciousness. It’s all a dream. That’s the next level of the meaning of mechila, of chalom. It’s the same letters. (There’s a heh and a yud) Oh, stop being a shtickler. The root of machal, is the same letters as chalam, and that’s really what happens. That’s when you’re dancing a dance, (machol) everyone is thriving and writhing around, everyone is part of this dance, a circle, which is atid lavo. Which G-d is going to make with the tzaddikim in atid lavo, where everyone is in a circle (Dance of duality) No, that becomes a dance of singularity because it’s a circle. Like everything is equidistant from G-d. That’s in the end. Yaakov is not there. Yaakov is the line still. The dance is another madrega.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Synopsis: The beginning of Yitzchak's love is in binah, Yaakov's love is in the experience of G-d through Shema Yisrael and Baruch Shem K'vod, etc.

Episode Transcript:

…[Thanks to] a great convergence of events, that we can meet on Yud Tet Kislev, I’m very happy about that, in the context of where we were holding last time, I guess thanks to your question, we continued farther than the class had actually ended…
[I want] to touch some of what the Admor HaZakeyn offered as a teaching on two experiences of longing for G-d, which are reflected in two aspects of being a bride, being the kallah of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. The word itself means two different things. It means both longing, as in kaltah nafshi, and also it means a absolving, as in kilayon. These are two movements of the soul in pining for G-d, and those are the two meanings of the word, kallah, which is being reflected in the way Knesset Yisrael is living the love of G-d throughout Shir Hashirim. And if I recall correctly, we saw that the movement between these two kallot actually creates a song in the vibration and the oscillation of these two movements. Like if I begin to move my hand quickly enough to begin to produce a sound—like when you hit a guitar string—this vibration produces sound and song, so the song that’s produced is the Song of Songs, and the root of all song, is this oscillation between the complete abnegation of the soul and G-d, the ratzo, and the shov, coming back here to live in this world, with the consciousness of the longing for G-d, which is the other aspect of kallah.
We primarily have been talking about Yitzchak, and I wanted to go back to that to briefly remind us of how Yitzchak’s experience of how all is G-d was a very profound reflection of something which is called the aspect of the yechid, “no other than.” He is the only one. “He is the only one” led Yitzchak to be able to, so to speak, insist upon G-d’s forgiving us. Because G-d, you know, we’re just a pile of ashes. You are our life. And when Your life is removed from us, we’re still a pile of ashes, and even that is generous. Giving us even that level of reality in which G-d has, so to speak, removed Himself from us. And so Yitzchak pointed at the end of time to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and says to Him, “Of course you must give them mechilah.” That was something that we try to take into an avodah for ourselves, and we a little bit jumped the gun on it because really Yitzchak is the bechinah of mechila that HaKadosh Baruch Hu is mochel us, and looking at us as being the chalal that he has so-to-speak vacated, but hasn’t really vacated.
Yitzchak, though, in his return to the experience of human reality, becomes the greatest lover, ironically, and this we spoke about in a previous segment of these teachings, that Yitzchak is the first appearance of love between people, whereas Avraham Avinu is the love of G-d, and has apparently very little to do with love between people. He has to do with chesed between people, but that’s something else. Yitzchak is the first appearance in the Chumash of love for his wife. And the Chumash describes that he loves his wife.
Now it’s crucial to realize that in Parshat Chaya Sarah, the profound story about him going to get his wife, is that…when Yitzchak is out in conversation, “v… besadeh…” He takes Rivka into the tent of his mother, Sarah, vayikach et Rivka, and he takes Rivkah, vayikach, that very first word that G-d used when G-d acted upon man in that primordial moment, when G-d had to take man with kind words and temptation. Vayikach. Et Rivka vtehilo l’ishah. Note, first it says Vayeviehah… he brought her into his mother’s tent, Sarah’s tent, then Vayikach… what’s new? What’s changed? Now he’s in the kichah and all that means, her heart being there also, not just her having come there. Vatehih lo l’ishah, a third level, she’s now become his woman, v’yiahvehah, and he loved her. V’nachem… that he is consoled over the loss of this mother.
So there is much to say about these verses, but I just want to point out that in our context, that really what’s happened is Yitzchak’s return to this worldly consciousness comes through binah. That binah is the aspect of differentiated and separated-out thinking. Whereas chochmah is the whole picture, so to speak, binah is separated out and progressive thought. So hear this: When Yitzchak returns from the experience of there’s nothing but G-d, so ironically, the one who it’s hard to identify the love of G-d with, because we also saw that his experience of G-d is of deveikut, is a full and utter communion in which there’s nothing other than G-d, when he is in his shov of coming back, passing through as we’ll explain momentarily how that works, so then he’s just totally astounded at the fact that there’s people here, there’s separate realities here, there’s a mamashut, a substance to all of this, and he lives with complete reverence for each individual expression of life and material in this world. It’s so marvelous. It’s such a pele, and he knows that as G-d’s great love. Because there’s absolutely no reason why there would be anything here at all. Only G-d’s ahavah, that there should be here a materialized reality in which people would experience their lives as separate and disparate and other, so to speak, than G-d. And so he has ultimate and complete respect for that. It’s ironic: with G-d, it was complete deveikut, and the love there, it’s barely present because for there to be love, there needs to be a lover, but he’s complete mitateha, yachid, but in his shor he comes back and sees every person as a yachid, as an absolutely and utter uniqueness, like with G-d, his experience of G-d is yachid, so his experience of every other human being is yachid, of uniqueness, and that’s why Yitzchak is called “yechidecha” at the opening of the Akeidah. Because he knows ultimate uniqueness, because he’s touched ultimate uniqueness in G-d, who is the ultimate unique One, there is no other like Him, for there is no other reality like him at all. So you hear this? How the same word has the power to be nothing but Him, and there’s nothing but you. I’m sure that the most loving words a person can say are, There’s no one but you. Do you hear that? So Yitzchak lives that and embodies that and actually becomes entitled, yechidecha, it’s the third (first?) time that word appears in the Torah. And therefore when he meets his wife, he can say to her, you’re my only one.
And he takes her into the tent, which is the tent of binah, because now rather it being the vision of chochmah, in which the all, in which Avraham Avinu, on the right side of the chart, the expansiveness, the gedulah. On the left side, is where love appears in the aspect of yachid. The mother love. Mothers far more than fathers have this connection with the child in which every child experiences the mother like being toward him as you’re my only one. This is a real aspect of mother love. It’s an aspect of specificity that comes from the left side, so to speak, the gevurah side of the chart. That’s why binah is the place of the hamtkah of din. Din can be separated into dividing, but when it goes up into binah, as we saw in hanotain lsechvey binah, it becomes connective. You’re my only one, and we live as a connective tissue between us. Because mother have the experience of child as having been yereh imah. Chazal say that a child in embryo is like a limb of the mother. She has had the experience of the connective tissue, so to speak, and now when she expels him in contraction, and that is what it’s called in English, the translation of the tzimtzum, and that’s what they should have called it, instead of hitkabtzuyot, the should have called it tzimtzum. Then the contractions, then she expels him, and forces him out to take his place in the world, and continues to see him as you’re my only one. You know those moments after birth, the mother’s looking at the child, she says you’re my only one. I don’t think that there’s any moment that can compare to that. And it’s a good thing that B”H most of you shouldn’t have to be drugged after giving birth. To be aware and conscious and look into that child’s eyes when he has that experience of I’m the only one. It really is, and that Chazal really say, make sure that your child nurses from the left side first. Why? Because it’s the place of binah, (It’s also where your heart is) So that binah, comes down through gevurah and ends in hod. All that side ends in hod. And this is very clear to those of you who have been enjoying these explorations since last year, but I can include everyone, and that is that Aharon is hod because he is the ultimate lover of the briot. Aharon ohev et habriot. So that the Zohar asks a deep question, and the mefarshei Hazohar wonder. Some places in the Zohar it says that the root of love is chesed. And in other places in the Zohar it says that the root of love is binah.
So the mefarshim wonder, hmmm, where is the root of love? So I want to claim that the root of love of G-d is in chesed. And that the experience of the oneness of reality is all in kinship with Him, but the root of love of man is in binah, because that’s where the expelling of an other into standing on his her own two feet happens, and it comes down into individuation in gevurah, and the appreciation and gratitude and ability to be makir tov, which is in hod, which is why we [incomprehensible–Aharon as so much the man who is called in English he’s] ---people, he empowers them, and that’s how he brings people to forgiveness is that he empowers them…
When Yitzchak meets Rivkah, so the place he takes her, so that it not be just the place of din, which is the place of her on the camel, if you remember… Now he takes her into the place of his mother, which is binah, and there he loves her. So the Zohar actually states mefarshim in the Chumash, that the place of the beginning of love is in binah. That’s the love of another person.
So Yitzchak finds consolation for the love that he had with his mother, in which in her eyes, of course, he was the only one, and in fact he was the only one, he gets consolation by being the only one in her eyes, and can give her the only one being in his eyes. In fact, he is the unique among the avot, never marries anyone else, never sleeps with anyone else. Only Rivkah. Only her. That’s the bechinah of yechidcha. And in terms of the divine experience, it comes from the experiencing G-d as yechido shel olam. Even the shel olam is stating too much. Yechid. Even very dear things about Yitzchak which I want to return to the Baal Hatanya for guidance in, for the rather odd phenomenon of “from yachid we go to echad”, meaning from Yitzchak, we go to Yaakov Avinu. And we want to come to know more of Yaakov Avinu’s experience in his relation to G-d which is different from that of Avraham Avinu, and different from that of Yitzchak, and it has to do with something which the Torah describes as when he’s leaving Israel, and he has to go into galut but he’s still in Israel, and it’s called vayifgah bamakom. That he hits the place. And the rabbis say, boy did he ever hit the place! M’komo shel olam. He hit the place of the world which is G-d.
(Getting a text) It continues in the passage we have been reading about the two kallot. And these two madrigot, and it tells us that the first bechinah, of kallah, is limsor nafsho l’echad, which means, shma lashon havanah, to understand, which is contemplating the greatness of G-d, how He is one, before, after, what he’s talking about is what we’ve been calling yachid, in which that something is there is no change in G-d, there is only Him. Atah hu ad she …. Halom… etc. ayn elokim, there is no elokim who hides me. So, don’t ever (book Him? ) be mechalael name, don’t ever empty out the world from My Presence.
The second bechina is kalta nafshi she hi lashon tchukah v’ ahava. The second aspect of kallah—I’m just reviewing what I said at the beginning of the shiur--is the longing and the loving, which is called bitul hayesh. There is a yesh, there is a reality, and it’s completely given over eleh she mevatel et atzmo…it seeks to come into deveikut with G-d, but it still continues to maintain its own entity. V’lachen, And therefore we find, in reading Kriyat Shema, we stop after the mesirut nefesh of Shema Yisrael in which there’s nothing other than You, G-d, and V’ahavta, in which we say, V’ahavta Hashem elokecha, with Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed, which is called yechid atatah, the lower unificiation. That is to say, because there is still a reality of separate entity, which is now completely devoting itself to Him in love. And know that G-d is the Source of all life which is here in the world of all the creatures. Then He points out that it says on the one hand, Biladai, ein elokim, outside of Me there is no multiplicity of forces, havayah…I am the Source of all of those apparently different forces which hide me away like the shell on the snail hides the snail in his house, which is part of him, so they’re no different from one another. And Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed is the experience of there being other and separateness but which is is always being given its life by G-d. Then the love comes from yesh mi she ohev, there is one who loves. Whether you follow that or not is fine, with or without.
The point is that we have a depiction here of a process which is complete bitul of in love, in Shema Yisrael, and then Baruch Shem, there is a drawing down of His name, which means that there is someone outside Him who can call Him, that’s the Shem and that’s the malchut. A speaking, malchut actually means the cutting out of the twenty-six letters, or the twenty-six which is the name of G-d, havayah, mal means to cut. Malchut is to cut (inaudible) to enunciate the name of G-d as one who stands outside of Him, Baruch Shem…Vaed. It’s down here in this world forever—as long as this world is—and then Vahavta et…and then you come to love Him.
Now the first one who said, Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed was Yaakov Avinu. And it happened when his children were in Egypt, he was going to tell them about how it would be at the end of time, and he was about to start prophesying about how it would be at the end of time, and the prophesy disappeared from him. All of a sudden it went black. And so he looks at his kids and he says, wow, maybe there’s something about you that’s stopping me from being able to describe the end of time. So you know what they say to him? They say, Shema Yisrael, listen Yisrael, Hashem Elokeinu Hashem Echad, we know there’s only one G-d, so he says, Baruch Hashem. But he doesn’t only say Baruch Hashem, he says Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed. That’s the first time those words were spoken according to chazal. And that means that Yaakov Avinu is the realization of Baruch Shem Kevod Malchuto L’olam Vaed…. Then what he’s allowing for is v’ahavta… he’s the one that’s going to allow now for the love of G-d, because yesh she ohev. There’s someone here who says Baruch Hashem, and who can call G-d by his name, and celebrate His name, and His malchut, the enunciation of different realities, and long for Him and love him. So Yaakov Avinu is the one who allows for that type of love to appear which is the love of the experience of G-d….
So how does that come about? Let’s go back to a story we hear from the Chumash and start from there. Are you wondering something? (What kind of love exactly?) The longing for G-d. That is the kallah that is the kallah of longing. Yaakov Avinu introduces that into the world with the words Baruch Shem Kvod…Vaed, creating a separation between us and one and it results from this passage from binah and gevurah now coming into tiferet.
The point is that we now will have introduced into reality compassion and rachamim because we can now ask G-d to have mercy on us, compassion on us in our distance from You. I have compassion on myself in my --- and now this experience of the gap and the distance becomes a source and root for the experience of compassion and the compassion of love. A love of caring, a love of responsiveness, a love which includes within it the overall connection of oneness of Avraham Avinu and the separate existence that Yitzchak introduces into the world from the perspective of human beings, but also the experience that there’s nothing other than G-d, which is the experience of Yitzchak, and now that’s going to produced by now merging and separating, an opening to rachamim.
Now before I explain this, I’ll just give you a very abstracted model right now. I want to point out to you a most fascinating thing: When we say Ashrei, we’re actually following through a certain process which is being described there, of the coming of the connection of G-d to the worlds through the sefirot. You may or may not have noticed that there are ten times during Ashrei that the name “Havayah” is spoken. Do people know this? This is a good thing to know. And the Arizal reveals that those ten times are k’neged those sefirot. Count them and watch. (This next part is amazing!—DG) Ashrei yoshveh….Kachah lo—that’s just the way it is, keter, that’s the way reality is, as G-d meets His world. Thilah David…I’m drawing some of your name down into the world. Every day I’m bringing down bracha, now we’re starting to open up. Gadol Hashem… I can’t know You except by complete surrender to You. It’s completely overwhelming, Your greatness, that’s chochmah. …eiyn choeker…I can’t be choeker at all. Dor l’dor… but what happens is all the generations, each one adding praises to G-d, eventually I suppose we’ll have a lot of them, but in the context of infinity you can’t have enough generations for the praise to Him to be spoken, but nevertheless we’re going to open up generations, we’re moving out towards binah. Hadar k’vod….and then we get to Chanun v’rachum, that’s binah, meaning that You, G-d are chanun v’rachum, You’re full of mercy, we’ve spoken already about tiferet, and we’ll see how that’s so, but she’s is the origin of it, as having a rechem, as being an imah and binah, as being very patient as things work themselves out. Then Tov Hashem.. that’s chesed. Yoduchah… everyone bows before Him and gives thanks to Him, and is m’vatel themselves before Him, that’s gevurah. And then finally, as we continue to go down, so we get to the next time that the word of G-d’s name is spoken, is Somech…. That is tiferet. Somech…k’fufim. Those who might have fallen as a result of the intense demand of gevruah, I’m raising you back up, I have mercy on you, I’m connecting you back to mother, and I’m raising you back up. That’s tiferet, and that’s the middle line. And that’s when the mercy of the mother becomes revealed and the child who has fallen, she picks him up. You’ve fallen down from the overwhelming demand of gevruah; mother comes and picks him up. It’s the hamtakah of gevurah that can knock you down, it’s just too overwhelming, like the accountability, the demands, the expectation on me that gevurah can be, then the sweet mother of binah raises the child up, that’s the rachamim that begins in binah, then it comes to expression in tiferet which is going to becomes embodied by Yaakov Avinu.
So Yaakov Avinu’s experience of G-d, is one in which his awareness of G-d is the one who is the unified and energizing life force that it within all things. And now I want to give a little about how we see this. It’s quite amazing. You know, Chazal talk about Yaakov Avinu’s whole process of his leaving Eretz Yisrael. And the truth is, Yaakov Avinu’s leaving introduces something new into the world, and that is going to sleep. Yaakov is the first one who the Chumash describes as going to sleep. He goes to sleep on his way out of Israel, and he begins to dream. Now, when he begins to sleep (Question: Doesn’t Avraham and Adam go to sleep?) There are other people, like Avraham and Adam, who have been put to sleep, but Yaakov Avinu is the first one who actually lies down and goes to sleep, of his so to speak own choosing, and chazal describe that as something which G-d wanted to happen.
The Gemara describes how Yaakov Avinu went to Haran, and he says, Wow, I passed the place where my ancestors prayed. I’m going back there. So he turns around and he starts to go back, but it’s getting late, so Hakadosh Baruch Hu does a miracle and he makes space shift and snap!, before you know it, he’s at Har Hamoriah, he’s at the place of the Akeidah, he’s at Yerushalayim, so he gets there and he prays, and then he want to leave. So the Gemara goes on and G-d says, Wait a minute, this person has come to my hotel, and he’s not going to sleep here? And so about that it says, Ki va hashemesh…He actually extinguished the sun, and Yaakov Avinu went to sleep, so he didn’t mapil alehem tardeymah like Adam and Avraham, but it was really important to G-d that Yaakov Avinu go to sleep.
And we find that Yaakov Avinu actually achieved a madrega in being about to walk. Vyisah et raglav. In the morning he picks up his legs and begins to walk as a result of his having gone to sleep there. And there’s even a midrash that says, ki telech…that when you walk assuredly, that’s az telech… that’s Yaakov Avinu. Why? Because “vshachavtah…” when you went to sleep, you had a really sweet sleep. As the pasuk says in Tehillim, keyn yitein…sheyna, he gives the one He loves sleep. There’s this G-d, like, sleep, sleep, sleep. He loves it, that you should sleep. And then, they say an amazing thing. That G-d speaks to Yaakov Avinu, and He said, Haretz asher.. the land you’re lying down on –he’s the first one to do that—I’m going to give this to do and to all of your progeny. So, there’s a kashiah in the verse: What? That’s all? Just the land you’re lying down on? That’s pretty chintzy, I mean Avraham Avinu was getting as far as he can walk, and Yitzchak was getting as far as he can see. And Yaakov Avinu is going to get the land that he lies down on (laughing). So Rashi says, No, G-d actually condensed the entire land of Israel right underneath him. This is why, the Rabbis say, Avraham Avinu, he gets a limited heritance as far as he can walk, as the verses indicate it’s a Gemara in Shabbos, and Yitzchak gets a limited inheritance, but Yaakov Avinu? He gets an inheritance without boundaries. How does Yaakov Avinu get an inheritance without boundaries? Because he’s touching it all. It all condenses right under him. It becomes one place, which is what happens when he puts his head down to rest. All the rocks are saying, “Oh, he’s putting his head down to rest! I want to be the one, I want to be the one…” Until they all just merge into just one rock. Same thing. He’s touched the place. Vyifka b’makom. which is how the pasuk describes his arriving there. He’s “hit the spot”—that’s Yaakov Avinu. So that Yaakov Avinu is the one who most intensely relates to the inner core of reality, I’m explaining, in which the externalities of it are there, but he’s relating to is unity aspect. So he’ll see the place. He hits the place, it has substance, it hasn’t lost substance like by Yitzchak. But, nor is it like Avraham Avinu, in like, “it’s all substance,” but it’s one substance. In Yaakov Avinu, it’s all one substance, but there’s one underlying reality which is maintaining it all in its presence. And so when he touches that he touches all places. He hasn’t lost distinction or delineation, but nor is he experiencing distinction or delineation as dividing things in a way which is they’re not all one.
So I’ll try to give you a clearer sense of things. You have a body. And it’s got a lot of stuff going on inside of it right now. You have billions of cells that are taking, giving, moving, dying, being born. All kinds of organs and processes. Unbelievable what’s going on inside of you right now. And it’s impossible for you to relate to all of those details, except by a unity consciousness, which is I’m one organism, then you’re relating to them all. And you know, on some level, you know every single thing going on inside your body right now, not consciously, because that would be completely overwhelming. On some level of awareness your brain knows every single thing that’s going on inside your body right now. It’s got to, because it’s running the show and we know that. If there’s any brain damage, chas v’shalom, so different functions inside the brain will cease to function. Or you can excite them by touching different parts of the brain, or giving the brain different kinds of sounds. Now they do things things, trying to imitate different types of brain waves inside your head, and different things start happening to you. What is that? So that means, you mean everything going on inside your body, but you don’t know it, that’s because there’s a unity consciousness which is holding it all.
Now get this, folks, and that is that the whole world is one man. (Here you begin channeling real magical moments—DG) This is the teaching of the kabbalah from the idra, of Rashi. The first thing that G-d made is—
and making is already too material a language—the first thing that G-d made is Adam Kadmon, the primordial man. Which unfortunately, since Darwin, sometimes conjures up images of someone with a bat and a rock, swinging someone by her hair. But let’s get that picture out of our heads right now. Adam Hakadmon is the first realization of the beginnings of a reality which will be outside of G-d, so to speak, and that is tzelem elokim. Everything that is in the universe on spiritual levels or physical levels is Adam HaKadmon. Everything is as one man. And you can see this, just look outside the window, and my gosh, once you get into a consciousness of Adam, the world is Adam, so then just seeing the sky as the skull and the clouds are like brain matter, and the trees, if you look at the prime form of a tree, it’s like branching lungs, it’s really what trees are doing—how the vegetable kingdom functions— and the animals are like the slinking digestive tracts that are processing all the stuff, and the Rabbis say, it’s a midrash in Kohelet Rabah, the world has eyes, and ears, and a mouth, and hands, and arms, and a chest, and a heart, and legs…it’s all a human being. (Amazing insights! –DG)
And it is, folks, it is—it’s just a matter of vibrating the right frequency. Just look at a tree and let your lungs connect to that, look at the sky and the stars as those bright points of insight and understanding. And look at the clouds, and you’ll see it looks just like brain matter, it really does. You don’t have to be that imaginative. You just have to shift into that consciousness of the unity of it all. Now, how do you experience that? Is it one place in which all has been abnegated and lost into a perfect unity of things? We’re way out of Yitzchak because there’s nothing there. But even with Avraham Avinu, in which everything is one and the same, so to speak, there’s an experience of all that, in which you see the tree and you see the clouds, and you see it all and it’s all one. And therefore there wouldn’t be nothing that you would touch in that reality which wouldn’t in some sense be everything all at once because it’s all one organism. Are you touching me when you touch me here? Are you also touching my toenail? Well, in one sense, no, you’re just touching me on my wrist. But in another sense you’re also touching me on my toenail. I mean, everyone knows that. Try start spinning a little needle here or putting a little pressure on, and all of a sudden things will start happening in my body because it’s all one. And that’s the way it is. All of reality is that way. You press that table, and something’s going on in Timbuktu because you’re doing that. Vyifga b’makom, you’re touching the place. And those are the only people who really touch the place. But they touch m’komo shel olam because they’re touching the place of the world, so they’re touching everything when they’re touching the place. That’s Yaakov. So a guy can say to him, You know where you’re lying down? That’s the place, because now you’re sleeping.
What does it mean to be sleeping? It means you’ve left ego-consciousness in which all you are able to see are different parts of things as separate entities. But when you sleep, you’re not losing the experience of the different aspects, you’re just entering into them from a different access point. It could be equivalent to your subconscious, whatever that means on whatever level, knowing everything going on inside your body right now. Imagine tapping into that.
By the way, this is the best way for you to access and know something of what it means for G-d to know everything. You mean He knows all of us? He knows all of us, and what’s in our thoughts, and in our minds, and in our hearts, and digestive systems, each one of us, and but not just the people in the room, but everyone in the community here, and everyone in Gush Etzion, and everyone miles and miles around, everyone on the globe, billions of people right now, and everyone who’s ever been in time, and that’s just this one speck of a planet, talk about all the constellations, and he knows all that at once. Come on, how do you know all that at once? You can’t follow all that at once, can you? Well, you’re doing it right now, with every single thing that’s happening in your body. That’s why Yaakov Avinu is also the source of hashkafah. Of the divine providence and the divine knowing.
So, this is something new. Yaakov Avinu is on the place, and it’s all there. And so G-d says, ufaratzata. That’s how G-d tells Yaakov Avinu, You will have it all. Ufaratza…. Kedma. Not like Avraham Avinu, and not like Yitzchak, who had very specific inheritances. By the way, of course, there’s no other place where this could be happening but Jerusalem, where he is lying down, (The belly-button of creation, the only place—DG) which is why Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai says, you know, what it says later in the Chumash, ki lo vatem…you haven’t come to the resting place, and you haven’t come to the inheritance place, hahamenucha, the resting place, that’s Yerushalayim. The nachalach, that’s Shilo…Ah, you can rest there, you can really rest. The truth is, the only way you can be in that place is by resting. Because as soon as you start moving around, okay, welcome back, start moving around, come out of the sleep. There’s actually a mitzvah when you bring a korban to Yerushalayim, there’s a mitzvah linah, the Gemara Rosh HaShanah, daf tet, You can’t come to Yerushalayim and not go to sleep, you’ll miss the whole thing! That’s why no one ever said, When he came to Yerushalyim, Makom tzar mi lalun. There’s not enough place here to sleep. Of course there’s enough place for everyone to sleep in Yerushalayim. If you go to sleep. That’s the only condition, of course. Mamash, it’s a halachah. (Long reflective silence).
So, a most interesting thing happens in Yaakov Avinu. If you look at the mitzvah of loving G-d, it says, V’ahavta et Hashem elokecha…m’odecha. b’chal lvavcha, the sefarim say, that’s Avraham, he’s given over his heart to G-d, and his love for others is really non-existent. He does chesed with others out of his love for G-d. B’chal l’vavcha. Out of his love for G-d. That’s Avraham.
Yitzchak, b’chal nefshecha, dies for G-d, gives up his life for G-d, b’chal nafshecha… even notel et nafshecha. even if he takes your life away, so there won’t be a lover left, I’ll be dead. That’s Yitzchak.
But Yaakov Avinu is b’chol m’odeach, What does b’chol meodecha mean? So the Rabbis teach, that’s with all of your mammon, your money, your possessions. So they ask, What? After you’ve given up your life, now you’re telling me about giving up my possessions? I mean, what’s more important, my life or my possessions? Right, your money or your life? What was this guy’s name, this old Jewish comedian --Jack Benny, who probably none of you ever heard of -- he had almost every show, this self-deprecating Jew thing, so a mugger would come to him, and say, “Your money or your life!” and he would go, “Hmmm, let me think about that.” So the Rabbis actually say, So what’s going on here? So there are some people who actually love their lives more than their money, and there are some people who love their money more than their lives. So the people who love their money more than their lives, they have to be told also, you have to give up your possessions for G-d. Okay, that’s good, but still the order of the verse has this as being the ultimate. Seems wrong, right? It shouldn’t have been the ultimate, it should have been becausehol m’edodecha ub’chol nefshacha. (How is it the ultimate?) Because it’s the end of the verse. You’re asking the same question the Admor HaZakeyn asked, after you’ve been in yachid, and there’s nothing other than Him, I’m back, here I am! and I love you, and I long for you. But you were just completely at one with him. What are you coming back for? What’s going on here?
But that’s exactly what the verse says, B’chol nafshecha uvchol meodecha. All of a sudden you’ve got a meod. You know what meod is? It’s the same letters as Adam. (Sounds of amazement) Here I am, with all my possessions, with all my self-hood, with all my creativity, my meod. The more than what you gave me, so to speak, the creativity that I’ve generated. Like the Rabbis said, tov meod, G-d saw and said, Hm, the Yetzer Harah’s pretty good, it’s very good, meaning it’s beyond the givens, it’s when you make yourself into something, that’s the meod, that’s when Adam becomes the meod, it’s really a lot, and that is Yaakov Avinu. You know how I know it’s Yaakov Avinu? Because in last week’s parshah, Yaakov Avinu is about to meet Esav in VaYishlach, and he says, Just wait a second, I’m going back to pick up these pachim k’tanim, these little vessels that I left behind. So the Rabbis say that in the thick of night, at the risk of his life, he goes back to get his pachim ketanim and he starts wrestling with the angel of Esav. That’s the scene when he’s left alone. Vayivater ’yAvraham Avinukov l’vado. Why was he left alone? Because he went back to get these little flasks. So you know what Rashi says about that? The tzaddikim, they love their money more than they love their bodies. Oh man, really? Yeah. Because his creative investment in creation, his personal realization of what he worked for and what he made out of all the givens of life, he’s not going to give that up. That’s his mammon. That’s his meod. It’s both a real thing and a symbol.
You might be willing to appreciate this more if you imagine a painter. (Whispering) He painted this most glorious painting. It’s beautiful. This is mamash his eternity in this. This is what he’s brought to the world. This is what he’s gifted the planet with. It’s marvelous. And everyone who looks at it just realizes that there’s been someone who’s walked this planet who’s this glorious creature. What a creation that person is! And then becomes aroused to know the beauty of G-d and the one who has created it. And now, imagine that person being told, “Either we will slash you or the painting.” Where does that go? It’s not so pashut. And imagine someone who loves the Creator so much as sees the embodiment of the Creator in what he has done being asked that question, what should he give up? Okay. That at least touched something of what that would be in the meod, but thank G-d we’re not asked to do that by G-d.
But what we are asked is to devote all of that to Him—that’s meodecha, In other words, to be real, creative, unique, separate people of substance, and to love G-d through that, that’s not loss of self of Yitzchak, or “we’re all one” of Avraham Avinu, it’s my piece, my little piece in this reality I have now embedded into the organism of all of creation. My little piece, my little, little piece, I’m devoting it to the organism of Adam HaKadmon. I’m not viewing it as some separate particle just flowing free-style into space; it’s got the makom of the world that it’s part of. I’m devoting it to G-d. I’m devoted it to the totality. I’m not losing it. It’s like my real and specific and different entity connected to the all. That’s bechol meodecha. In full and real love in which it’s all connected.
This is why the Ramchal teaches that the triangle is the form of the sefirot when they’re in their perfection because there’s a third that binds them together, that’s Yaakov Avinu. As opposed to when they’re one on top of each other, which is Esav, which is hierarchy in which one is seeking to overcome the other. But this consciousness of “we’re all one organism”, it’s all one reality, that’s the consciousness of Baruch Shem Kvod Malchuto L’olam Vaed, which is is echad, as opposed to yachid. It relies on yachid, it relies on seeing each as a different independent creature. But it ends with echad, we’re all one interconnected and forming one human being, which is Adam Kadmon, who is the image of G-d.
(Sounds of someone weeping in the background.)
And this is why I want to tell you something very beautiful. And that is the statement, bishveil li nivrah haolam the world is created for me, whereas by Adam HaRishon, it’s all created for me, but by Yaakov Avinu, it will come through as a shvil, a path, bishvil li nivrah haolam.
I once had this experience. I taught once the mishnah in Sanhedrin, about bishvili..olam. The Mishnah asks, Why was Adam created alone? And the answer was, so that everyone could say, Bishvili..olam, that’s what the mishnah says. Then the mishnah goes on and says, so every time you kill a person you’ve killed the whole world. So it looks like we said the same thing again, it’s just that one is positive and one is negative. But I think there’s a deeper thing here. The only way I intuited that it needs to be taught is, for everyone in the room to say bishvili…olam at once, because everyone was bothered by that. That sounds egotistical, the whole world was created for me? So you’re to serve me, and all of this is just to serve me? But you’re saying the same thing, right? So who’s this cup for? (Grabbing cup) “Bishvili nivrah haolam--No, bishvili nivrah haolam, No, bishvili—“ That’s the way most of the world walks around. Until everyone is saying bishvili and then they becomes one organism saying bishvili nivrah haolam in which I have my particular path which is being expressed through my specific expression of it in which I am embedded in the overall reality of echad.
So Yaakov Avinu’s love of G-d comes from his realization of his selfhood in a way in which he is enthralled with G-d as being the life force which unifies all of this together into one organism. That’s his experience. And therefore he’ll always have deep compassion on every part of creation that it should find its right place in that organism. That’ll be his prayer. And that’s why his prayer is called in the Chumash vayifka bamakom, that’s when Yaakov Avinu was m’taken maariv, the Gemara says. Vyifka bamakom. Everything should have its place. When things are in their right place, the organism functions right. But they need to know what they’re there for. Like, if my eye undoes its being an eye—Hey, I don’t want to just be an eye, man, that’s too little for me just to be an eye. I want to be a nose and a mouth too. Then we start running into trouble. This is a compassionate stance in the sense of I’m seeking for you that you should have your place. Do you understand a compassionate stance? If there’s a poor person, to be compassionate toward him is saying, I just want you to live. This is zokaf k’fufim, that we saw in Ashrei, that’s tiferet. You’re beautiful just as you are, which is Yaakov Avinu.
But the real beauty of you is in your embedded context. Ah, then you’re really beautiful. One note is very beautiful. But it’s far more beautiful when there’s a symphony playing and there’s a harmony to it, and there’s whole reality that it’s a part of. That’s the real perception of beauty. A kind of connectivity to G-d in which G-d is making it all beautiful. Because he’s the makom, allowing everything to be itself. By being in the embedded context of all. It’s a balance. I know I live this very much.
I’ll make it really pragmatic. I don’t want to do anything if it’s not going to be everything. To do this particular thing, to teach Chassidut on a Tuesday morning in Berot, I mean there’s a big world out there. I mean, what is this? Nothing compared to everything. So why bother getting up to do it? Why bother? So that the picture of the all can be completely debilitating. So I’m going to stay in my room, I’m just going to do my own thing. I can’t do anything. So I’m just going to stay in my own room, and do my own thing. Well, what’s that? And we wobble between these spaces. I do.
And the ability to say bishvili, derives from binah, and I’ll teach you something really deep from Kabbalah, that nativ is from chochmah, which is the vision of it all, and shvil is in binah, the Arizal teaches, but suffice it to know that shem havayah in all of its permutations adds up to the word nativ. And all of the permutations of shem ekyeh, which is shem binah, add up to shvil. Ehyeh, that’s in the first person, me speaking. I am experiencing G-d as saying, ehyeh, I will be. That connection up, which then produces later rachamim, But they all becomes shvil, so that creation can say bishivil…But we have everyone else in the room saying, bishvili…olam ,too, Baruch shem.. vaed. Your great malchut, how beautiful it is, how blessed it is. And that’s the higher place, that’s what the Baal Hatanya, wants to say, that’s the one that G-d really wants, is when we’re souls in bodies and connected to His life flowing through it all, uniting it all and being one organism. That’s after the experience of Yitzchak, of yachid, is the experience of echad. It’s all one and I love you, G-d And I’m devoting all of my uniqueness, all my possessions, all the things I’ve made to the participation in the one organism which is ki vyachol, You.
A person who lives that, everything he touches is part of the all, it is the all. And that is exactly what the Ramchal teaches at the end of in the Mesilat Yesharim when he says, the kadosh, which is Yaakov Avinu, everything he eats, touches, sees, becomes part of the sanctifies reality of G-d. But he’s not not seeing it, He’s seeing it. He’s seeing it and having the deepest connection with it that could be. (Long silence).
The Rabbis say that Yaakov Avinu had the beauty of Adam Harishon before he sinned. When Adam HaRishon was Adam ha Kadmon, he extended from the ends of the universe to the ends of the universe. Yaakov Avinu had that. Beauty. Now you can get a taste of what it means to be a taam also. Perfection, I’m not trying to manipulate anything. Not trying to distort any reality so that it comes out how I want it to. Taam with what it is. But something I do want to tell you, and it leads to where I hope it will introduce something in a workshop-type orientation. Yitzchak is the one who can demand, so to speak, mechila from G-d, so Yaakov Avinu will introduce compassion that we’ll have on one another. And I believe that it works something like…and that is, by virtue of my knowing that we’re all part of this one organism, so you’ve come into my life, and you did something really annoying, you like, walk by my car, scratched it, and didn’t even give a hoot. Al tidag, yiheh b’seder. Don’t worry about it. Let’s say. I’m dealing with my car right now, it’s the first time I have like a nice car, already smashed it twice. So where will the forgiveness come from? Where will the mechila come from? Not G-d giving me mechila, but my mechila for the person who just walked by, it will come from the consciousness of our one organism. You are there for a reason, and it’s all part of the picture.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Synopsis: Yitzchak introduces the laughable paradox that there is nothing other than He, and the human perspective, which is He has vacated space for us.

Episode Transcript:

I want to continue our exploration of the pathways to love of G-d as we've been exploring throught the vantage point of the unlikely characteristics of Yitzchak Avinu.
We have seen, although Avraham is known as the lover of G-d (and that he has many characteristics which are crucial for anyone who is to be a lover of G-d, from which we can learn), Yitzchak Avinu is very present to that relationship to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, too; and although his primary relationship to Him is that of yirah, and the name associated with him is Elokim—which is the name of din—but what we're coming to discover is that actually, were it not for din and Elokim, then there would be no space for love. And what we have seen is that specifically, the withdrawal, or the aspect of din, or gevurah which makes space, or creates an otherness—a room that there should be an other—, it is the crucial transition that allows for love to emerge.
So we saw Eleh toldot yitzchak ben avraham, Avraham holid et Yitzchak, the verse which opens up the parshah, which is the primary parshah about Yitzchak, which is that These are the generations of Yitzchak, here they come: Avraham gave birth to Yitzchak. So usually, generations have to do with the progeny that comes out of a person, and yet the Torah says, Eleh toldot yitzchak ben avraham, Avraham holid et Yitzchak, Avraham gives birth to Yitzchak. So how is that the toladah, the progeny, of Yitzchak? So here the catch: We have this beautiful relationship between Avraham, who is the primarily the power of chesed and love of G-d, and Yitzchak, who is the power of withdrawal and making space that Avraham indeed gives birth to Yitzchak. Meaning, that it's because of G-d's desire to give and exalt existence—which is chesed—and to act as a lover, that he gives birth to Yitzchak, who is the power of withdrawal and making space. That's one level. But the other level is Eleh toldot yitzchak ben avraham, that the geneology of allowing for there to be a love which will come into existence, namely Avraham (who gives birth to Yitzchak), requires that there be a Yitzchak; meaning, that in order that there should be Avraham, there needs to be Yitzchak, so that Avraham is, in a sense, a toladah of Yitzchak. Do you hear how this works? I'll put it in a different language. That the withdrawal of G-d and His infinite presence that allows for there to be a space in which there will be creatures of otherness is itself what allows for the appearance of a life-giving and a love-present principal, or characteristic, which is Avraham. Because if there were no lover, then there would be no loving. If there were no space for one to stand against you and apart from you, then there would be no relationship. And so the progeny of Yitzchak, so to speak, is Avraham. He allows Avraham to become revealed. But it's of course Avraham, namely, the motive force of giving life and giving love, who gives birth to Yitzchak. So you see, each one is a going back—each one is providing the other with their reality. There would be no withdrawal if it wasn't that G-d had desired to give and to love. But nor would there be the possibility of give and love were it not that there was withdrawal.
So this verse guided us both into the realization that the withdrawal and the empty space is in itself an opportunity for the realization and the experience of love, and that's why it's there. And we did work also with being present to the emptiness and the lack. The vulnerability that that involves, both on the part of Hashem Yitbarach, so to speak, and our part, the ability to hold space, [we?] 6:15 tend to stay in that, enough that there should be an arousal of the desire and the longing for the One who will now come to be with me in that space to realize relationship.
So these were some aspects of Yitzchak. And we saw that Yitzchak's primary activity in the world was digging wells, making space, and this can fall into terrible degredation and distortion. The plishtines, who are advantage-taking of that kind of a perspective, they make fun and ridicule of that. Some of where it goes with Esav, that his tiredness and boredom with a meaningless world which G-d had, so to speak, vacated, and the insistence on action and on doing, which becomes Esav's par excelence expression: I'm going out into the field and I'm going to make it happen, I'm going to hunt it down. The way he reflected his father's own consciousness and desire to sanctify that space of being a transition point, in which he asks his father, How do you take ma'aser from the straw; in a sense, his father's realization that indeed he is, in a sense, a straw—he is like a hollow corridor through which things pass but that is at the bottom of it a wellspring of mayim chamim. As opposed to being a mamvoi mfulash, open-ended at both ends, which was the idea of the plishtim.
And we also saw at the end of last time that Yitzchak's planting is the first time that zerayim come up again in the Chumash, ever since the very first time they came up in Bereshit. And I'll just remind you of where we were there and then we'll go farther there today, and I want to take a different tactic on how to approach it.
The way in which the Chumash describes on the third day of Creation, when G-d creates the plant life, there is the most extraordinary thing; and that is, He creates the grass that it should be mazriah zerah, that it should give seed. And He creates the fruit trees, that they should give off fruit that will have seeds that will make trees like them. The grass didn't have that. So the grass had to make a kal-v'chomer. So the grass said, If the trees, which are big and easy to distinguish one from another, need to reproduce in a way in which they preserve their species, so us, how much more so, kal v'chomer. And so in the following verse, it says that the earth gave forth grass that was mazriah serah l'minahu. That had seeds that made its own species, even though it's not what G-d had ordered.
And here, rather than G-d being angry that the earth hadn't produced what He had asked it to produce, in another scene He is, about the trees not tasting like the fruit, etc. (sic) Here, G-d is actually overjoyed. And it says, Yehi chvod hashem l'olam yismach hashem b'maasav. The honor of G-d is forever. He is joyous in His creatures. How is he joyous in His creatures? He is joyous in His creatures because the grass figured it out and understood that He desired specificity of species, that things should be different one from another. He was overjoyed with that. It was the first time that it said that G-d was happy with His creation. Up until then it's been good, He keeps saying "Everything's good." But now he is happy: yismach hashem b'ma'asav. Why? Because the grass had made a kal v'chomer and here [we see it? Unclear because someone is making noise 11:10] so deeply: the grass had an empty space, so to speak, within which to have an awareness of knowing what it was that G-d wants, identifying His will and extending His will into a space that He, so to speak, had vacated, by not telling them what they needed to become, so that they should become what they choose to be.
But, here's the thing. What they're choosing to be is exactly what G-d wants. And that gives Him great joy, when they choose to be exactly what G-d wants. That's kal v'chomer. And it's the first Torah she b'al peh. It's the first Oral Law, in the sense of the Oral Law being the creative interraction and expression, it's the first Oral Law expression in the Chumash. It's the first time Chazal say there's a kal v'chomer. Kal v'chomer being like, mamash, that's the one, like everyone knows the kal v'chomer. That's the derech she ha Torah nidreshus (12:16) which most involves human sechel, or understanding, binah, l'hitbonen, to understand something, to contemplate, to draw out its implications.
There are thirteen ways in which the Torah is nidreshet. But many of them are not logical. They are just sort of like, principals. But the one which is the logical principal, which means it involves binah, to be mitbonen, to contemplate and to draw out implications, that's kal v'chomer. The first time you have a kal v'chomer is with the grass figuring it out: G-d's very happy. Because here is the most beautiful moment, when his Creation is indeed honoring Him: Yehi yichvod hashem l'olam. But how is His creation honoring Him? That in the space He vacated, His creation seeks Him out. And not only does his creation seek Him out, it knows to align itself with His will.
And it's this deep secret, the secret of the vacated space which is indeed not really vacant. Which is the other aspect of Yitzchak and his consciousness, which is a paradox. And don't expect to figure it out, because you can't. But Yitzchak leads a dual life, a dual existence, a dual consciousness. On the one hand, a consciousness of the vacated space in which the calling is for me to become myself expressed and the other, which is there is nothing empty of Him. That this empty space which He has emptied is not empty of Him. I mean, there is no place empty of Him. You can't hold them both, they contradict one another. On the one hand, He has vacated the space so that I should grow. On the other hand, the Zohar says, there is no space vacant of Him, how can you say there is any space vacant of G-d? He's infinite. What does that mean, He vacated space? What are you talking about? He's infinite, His boundaries don't end somewhere, do they? It's ridiculous—of course, He fills every place. Then, if He fills every place, then where am I? Well, you're in the space He vacated. Well, where is that space that He vacated if He fills everything? It's where you are. Me? Yeah, you! Oh, you mean me, okay, fine. Is that to say that there is a space where He is not? Chas v'shalom! Now what do you do? Nothing. You laugh. There's nothing to do. Laughing is what allows us to be in utter amazement without trying to hold with our sechel the contradictory realities. And all you can know is that there is a consciousness which is divine perspective which is there is nothing other than He, and the human perspective, which is He has vacated space for us. And you can know those two things. And we're going to see today, B'ezrat Hashem, how powerfully applicable that is and how crucial that is of both those consciousnesses at once. But the only way to hold them is just to laugh.
So, now just to put this back into the story form, when the grass has a kal v'chomer, where is it figuring it out what it is that G-d wants from? By observing G-d and knowing what it is that G-d wants. There's an element there that is not entirely expressed there, that idea, but there's an element there of them knowing G-d's will.
This is the deep secret which we might have mentioned of the way we bless the Torah when we make an aliyah to the Torah. So if you've listened, so you know the first bracha before reading the Torah is asher bachar banu mikol ha'amim v'natan lanu et torato, He chose us from among all the peoples and He gave us His Torah. Magnificent. Then when you're done reading the Torah, then you say, asher natan lanu torat emet v'chayeh olam nata b'tocheinu that He gave us the true Torah, and that He planted eternal life within us. Chayei olam nata b'tocheinu. Yichvod hashem l'olam yismach hashem b'maasav. He planted eternal life within us. That is a reference to Torah she b'al peh, to the incredible capacity that we have by our minds, by our hearts, by our being, vibrating with the divine consciousness of knowing what it is that G-d wants, of having that revealed to us. That's the eternal life that He planted within us and it's growing all the time. That's Torah she b'al peh. So when you're finished reading the Torah she b'chtav, okay buddy, now it's time for you to step down from the bimah, and begin to realize through your life and through your awareness what it is that G-d wants, by virtue of the life that He's planted within you. That's why the second place in the Torah that there's someone planting is Yitzchak. He's the one who uses the zeraim, because he lives the vacated space in which there can be a planting, which will bring forth that which G-d has already embedded within the empty space which we experience as empty space—but which is full of His presence. Don't mind me having said something which is totally contradictory because you can just laugh at it, it's okay. There's nothing else to do with it. But we'll see that it has tremendous implications, and one of them is something called mechila. The word in Hebrew, mechila, which means forgiveness, actually comes from the word, chalal, the empty space. Now how those two are related, B"H we're going to see by virtue of a sotry.
And it's a story of the end of time when Yitzchak comes forward with all his glory. (19:37) There's a story here on this second sheet. It's brought in the Talmud in the chapter called Rabbi Akiva, and there's reason why it's the chapter called Rabbi Akiva, and why this story would be there, and that is the following. Rabbi Shmuel Bar Nachmani says there is a verse which says, You are our Father, because Avraham we don't know, and Yisrael we don't recognize, but You, G-d, redeem us, l'olam shmecha. Your name is forever. So in the future, G-d's going to come to Avraham saying, Your children have sinned. So Avraham says to Him: Ribbono shel olam, let them be wiped out. Too bad. Start again. You know, I like new beginnings. So You'll have another one.
Then maybe I should go to Yaakov. Yaakov had a lot of trouble raising his kids. So maybe You'll have a little more mercy? So I'm going to go to Yaakov. So He goes to Yaakov, and He says, your children have sinned. So Yaakov says, well, let them be wiped out in the glory of Your name. Oh, man, come on, these old people they know nothing, and the youngsters, they don't have any advice to give. I'm going to go to the one in the middle. I'm going to go to Yitzchak.
So He goes to Yitzchak, and he says, Yitzchak, your children have sinned. So Yitzchak says, What, my kids, not Your kids? Huh? Come on. When they said, Na'aseh v'nishmah, so You said, Ah! My first born son, now they're not your kids anymore? What happened? And anyway, come on! How much did they sin? How much do they live? Seventy years, come on. You're around forever. Seventy years! So seventy years, and if You take off twenty years, because You said You don't punish them until they're twenty years old, so there's only fifty years left.
So let's take a look at those fifty years. First of all, twenty-five of those years are nighttime, right? So, they're sleeping, they're getting ready for bed, they're waking up, they're drowsy, so now there's twenty-five years left. So how about taking away twelve and a half because they have to daven, and eat, and go to the bathroom, so basically, there's only twelve years left in a person's life where they can do anything productive. And anything destructive. So You know what? If You're willing to take them, good. And if not, how about half on me, and half on You? That will leave You with six and a quarter. (22:27) And You know what, if You want to tell me that they're all on me, well, I have sacrificed myself to You.
So everyone looks up, and everyone looks at Yitzchak and says, wow. You're our father. You're our father. So Yitzchak says to them, What are you giving me these praises for? Praise G-d. Just look right through me. So they look at—and it's very interesting. Machvey l'hu Yitzchak, hakadosh baruch hu beinayu. Yitzchak shows them G-d with their own eyes. So they all look to G-d and they say, ki atah hashem avinu. You, G-d, are our Father. You are our Redeemer, me'olam shmecha. Your name is forever—very important here—Your name is forever. So Yitzchak becomes the man of mechila. Yitzchak becomes the man who brings about forgiveness. So how is it that he brings about forgiveness? And what does that have to do with his having been on the altar and having sacrificed himself?
But you see the depth of this is, that the one who knows the empty space also knows that there is nothing other than Him. Because the person who knows the deep secret of the empty space knows that there really is no empty space. I'll put it like this. Why did G-d need to make an empty space, so to speak? Because He fills all in His infinity. So to say now that He makes an empty space is to contradict the reason you told me He needs to make an empty space. So He is no longer going to be infinite now that He made the empty space? Of course He remains infinite. But only the one who is deeply aware of the lack of His absence, and knows the secret of His having made Himself absent in His deep desire that there should be an other with whom He has relationship, that there should be a name, a name, which means the possibility of calling out another, and calling into expression in the mind and in the reality of another knows that there really hasn't been any vacated space at all. 25:11. Because He is infinite. Which is why He was going to be vacating the space in the first place. Now, don’t worry, none of this makes any sense. But that's this consciousness, which is a consciousness which leads to well, then it's all G-d. And this is what the Maharal teaches, he says the most astounding thing.
This is the Maharal of Prague, one of the greatest and in consensus teachers of Jewish teaching, became both, I would say, really the root of much of Chassidut, and also the Lithuanian depth thinking, especially in the guise of somone by the name of Yitzchak Hutner and other great teachers of depth teaching. Rav Kook, who enjoys both worlds, also is greatly indebted to the Maharal's teachings. (I just want to put him in a context.) So the Maharal says the following: Ki mitzad Yitzchak umidato ee-efshar she yiyeh hasarah v'hafradah l'yisrael min hashem yitbarach. The truth is, from the side of Yitzchak, of all people, my gosh, Avraham, the big lover, Yaakov, the big compassionater (sic!), no, but it's because of Yitzchak that you can never separate from G-d. Rak yesh lahem deveikut v'chibur l'gamrei el hashem yitbarach. They're completely attached to G-d. Lo shayach b'chet sheyimavdil umarchik et yisrael min hashem yitbarach. It's not chet that can separate us from G-d. Why? Ki mitzad midat yitzchak asher midat hadin because from the vantage point of din of all things, ka'asher yered l'omek hadin when you get to the very depths of din, yesh lilmod zchut. Then what you teach is merit. Or more deeply: Then, what you teach is translucense. You know, like in zchuchit. Something you can see through. That's what you teach when you get to omek hadin.
Omek hadin. Because omek hadin, G-d, is exactly what you told me, G-d, when You took me on the altar at the Akeidah. And You said to me, your life is about to disappear, my son. And in that moment I saw, that the truth is that there is absolutely no in-depth independence of my life. It's only You who provides me with it. And therefore I can never justify and lay claim to my life being deserving of being lived. Because as much as I try to claim to my life being deserving of being lived, I'm always going to get back to the point of but He's the One giving you your life. How deserving can you make your life, if He's always the One providing you with it?
(Can I say then that he never died and never lived?)
We'll get to that in a second and you're right to bring it up. So, I am completely present in that moment to actually in a sense, not being here because all is You, G-d, that's why Yitzchak cannot answer G-d in that moment. He can't answer G-d—what's he going to say to Him? Excuse me, just give me one more breath, I mean I deserve it, I did such good things in the world until now, don't I deserve another breath? Because you earned it? With what did you earn it? It's all from Me. It is all Me. And at that moment, Yitzchak becomes ashes on the altar. And literally, the Rabbis say, when the Jewish people came back from Babylon, and they didn't know exactly where to build the altar in the second Temple. Well, they looked around, sniffed and saw: there was smoke rising from the place of the altar. It was Yitzchak's ashes. Because the very one who knows of the empty space G-d had made also knows that there is nothing other than Him. And the real irony and the real joke, so to speak, is that the one who knows the empty space and knows otherness most deeply also must know most profoundly that he is not here. That all there is is G-d. And what he knows that all there is, is G-d, he also comes to know the depth of din, which is called al korch'cha atah chai. You live by force, which is to say, G-d is wanting you to live. He's wanting you to live in an embodied consciousness which experiences yourself as other and separate.
So I'm identifying with G-d's will by making the kal v'chomer. And if I look around and see that He made all these different species, I guess He wants me too. Ta da! Yismach hashem b'maasav. Wonderful. Lichvod hashem l'olam. That's great. That's the honor of G-d, that you are willing to live the separateness of consciousness is longing and in pining away for G-d, for Him, for His sake. And so, it's this astounding and impossible situation and the most blessed one. And that is, the more you become your own separate self, so the farther away you go from your Source in oneness. But should you just reabsorb yourself into the oneness which is your source, then you'll be moving very far away from your source and His will for you that you should become other. You want to hear that again? The farther away you move from the full abnegation and nothingness within G-d, by becoming an expressed self, so the more distant, so to speak, you become from Him, and the more you're just like longing for G-d in this empty prairie of space opened up that you should be able to be your independent entity.
And you're crying out for Him and you're longing for Him, and as the Ba'al haTanya describes it, you've become G-d's bride, from the meaning of the word kallah, which is kalta lecha nafshi, my soul thirsts for You, my soul yearns for You, You've become so far away as I've become my own separate self. And then the more your realize in your life the will of G-d, and express it your life as servant to Him, coming to know more deeply what it is that is His will for you, so then the more you begin to touch again, how He lives through you, and how you live in Him. And really, you're nothing more than His expression, which is the the other aspect of kallah, which is kilayon, which means you become completely abnegated. But the more you become completely abnegated, the more you mvatel and there's nothing other than Him, and then cease to do, because there's nothing other than the blissful presence that is Him, then the more far you become from what His intention is for you, which is that you should be separate, yearning for Him and arousing love for Him, and this is the eternal ratzo v'shov, back and forth, which is the life of those who know the place of Yitzchak.
But in depth, in omek hadin, that oscillation ceases, and all is known to be G-d. That's why it's Yitzchak who points to G-d at the end of time, and says to Him, it was all Him after all, and then G-d can forgive them, because they have learned the secret of translucence, has been melamed zcut, and has achieved mechila. Which means, opening up the tunnel, and mechila in Hebrew is a tunnel, opening up the tunnel, hollowing it out so that there should be forgiveness in which you'll see, and yes, it's for every single one of us. But every single thing that comes our way is G-d. And every thing you look at is Him, and every single circumstance you're thrown into is His realization.
Ever hit a dog with a stick, or threaten one with one? Oh, you're all such nice people. I've seen children do it. And the dogs, they attach the stick, it's the funniest thing. All the dog ever sees is the stick. See, a lot of people walk through life and all they ever see is the stick, so there's this person who's like saying all these nasty things to you and putting you down and betraying you and being really angering. And you start biting at the stick. What are you, a dog? What do you think, there's something other than G-d? Well, wait a minute, didn't you tell me there's not independent entities, and my own life, etc. (sic) yes, it is, but can you hold both those at once? Yes it is, and you know what? If you see a child who's being abused, so that's not the moment to say, That's all G-d and I guess that's what the child is meant to be having done to him—turn your other cheek. Or someone's chasing you down to kill you? Turn your other cheek. No, al korchecha atah chai. G-d has put you into this embodied condition of humanity that you should experience the other and that you should know that that moment now, part of that moment is you in it. So part of that moment is you having seen that child being abused. So now the calling to you is to respond to that. Not to say it's all G-d. And yet, that's to say it's all G-d, because, I'm responding because I'm here with G-d manifesting through me as one called upon now to respond to that circumstance.
See, there's foolishess which has come into the world, which is also a descendent of Yitzchak, which is, well, if it's all G-d, then turn the other cheek. Let it just play itself out. I really once had a friend who actually has left yiddishkeit, and I actually saw it all happening. I watched him enter into the consciousness of It's all
G-d and all love and that's true, and it is all G-d and it is all love. And therefore it's all just the way it needs to be. So I remember asking Him, What happens if you see someone chasing someone else to kill him? What do you do then? And he really didn't know how to answer me. Because it's all for the best. And it is all for the best. And it's all da'at. He really didn't know how to answer me. So I said to him, It says in the Shulchan Aruch the weirdest thing. It says actually you should kill the person who's trying to kill someone else. For him, that was like a breaking point. Because he didn't want to re-enter the consciousness of, I'm here to be seeing this and to be responding to it.
I had this most amazing thing where I was at a bris and oftentimes there's a Rabbi called upon to name the baby. So I'm standing there to be naming the baby and brachot and maybe some of us in the room were there. And it was a cloudy day in Bat Ayin, and the father says to me, vayikarei shmo b'yisrael, and the father says to me, Anan David. Anan David. Cloud of David. So I look at him and I said, No, I'm not going to do it. Now the reason I'm not going to do it is , anyone who knows early Jewish literature knows that Anan David is the nemesis of the Torah she b'al peh. He was the chief Karaite in the time of the Ramban. And the Ramban and other rishonim are full of all kinds of terrible things about Anan David, may his bones be ground to dust. A curse reserved for very few. So this guy is asking me to name his son Anan David. So someone who's holding the baby in front of me is like a hippy guy. Beautiful person who's fully love. He's also learned. He understood what's going on. So I sent the father, I said, you go talk to your wife, you go figure out another name, I'll stand here, the people in the room are standing there, it's okay, someone start a niggun. So he says to me, Rav Daniel, Rav Daniel, maybe this is his tikkun! So totally, I looked at him, I said, if it was his tikkun, I wouldn't be standing here. That was it.
(What was his name?)
I'm not going to say. But that's holding both.
(Is that the coach of bechira?)
I'm going to get to questions in a minute. But that's holding both. And that omek hadin can bring forgiveness—it's just so important to come back to that—because that forgiveness comes by virtue of realizing that it's all Him. And that's what Yitzchak says to G-d: It was all You all along. How small do I need to reduce them until you forgive them? Seventy years? Fifty years? Twenty-five years? Twelve and a half? Six and a quarter? How about ashes? And then they all look at Yitzchak and they say: You're our father. And he says, it isn't me! What are you talking about! You don't understand anything. It's Him! It's been Him all along.
But he pulls the fast one on G-d Himself, just like he says to them, It's Him! It's been Him all along, to G-d he says, It's You! It's been You all along. What are You going to do, wipe them out al kiddush shmecha? I (sic)never really lived! What are you talking about? What's going on around here? Ah, if they could know they've never really lived, then they have lived. V'atem hadevaikim b'ado-nai chaim kulchem hayom. You who are davek, and as the Maharal teaches us, the ultimate davek is Yitzchak, you who are hadavek in G-d are the only ones who are really alive. So that the only ones who are really alive are the only the ones who know that they are not really alive. It's a joke, huh? Yitzchak. This is why the Rabbis say, you are not allowed to fill your mouth with laughter in this world. Yup, don't think this is going to be easy for you. Here on the other page from the ??tee (45:03) haleitzanut, the Maharal brings a most astounding thing. He tells us the following story. And that is that Rebbe Yochanan, in the name of Rebbe Shimon bar Yochai, said the following: It's osser for a person to fill his mouth with mirth, with schok, schok, schok, ah. Yitzchak. You can't be fully Yitzchak in this world, can you? No. You know how I know? Because it says, az yimalah schok pinu ulshoneinu rinah. It says, then your mouth will be full of schok. And your tongue with rinah. When's that going to be? B'yom she amru bagoyin, higdil ado-nai lasot im eleh When even the goyim get it, that G-d's been great with us. That G-d has been great with them.
So, you know what, Reish Lakish, after he heard that, in the name of Rebbe Yochanan, so he never filled his mouth with laughter again. Uhhh. How come? So the Maharal says, You know what? There's no full simchah in this world. That's because this world is a world of always shifting, always growing, always changing, always developing. Never full, never complete, and joy is when things are full and complete. So there is always lack, there is always something which is not. So you'll focus as much as you can on what is, and you should, and that's what tov is, and that's what hakarat hatov is, and that's what connection is about, but we all know, that it's not full, because we live in a land of transition, transformation, aval az, but then, yimale schok pinu.
Listen to this, this is unbelievable: ki milat az bal davar she eino tachat hazman. Because the word az refers to that which is not dominated by time. What's not dominated by time? Well, time is continuity. It's a continuum, And az, it teaches about the moment. I'll say that again. Time is continuum and continuity, and az speak of the moment. As I've explained elsewhere, she lekach amru, that's why the Rabbis say, kol makom she omer vayhi everywhere it says and it was, and it came to pass, in the Tanach it's trouble, man, vay, vay, oy very, vayhi, oy vey, mipneh she kol havayah hu shinui, because every coming into reality is shift, and shifting is bad, which is why in Hebrew rauh, which is something shifty and shaky, somes from the word rah. It's shifting, it's changing, it's inconstant. It's going in and out, it's disappearing; give me something solid. The moments of joy, it's just when you experience it as full, here, now. Az is now. Aval milat az teaches the now. Sorry for the pun, but the power of now. Because gevurah is the poiwer of now. Gevurah literally means power, as we're going to see in a moment. Schok. Pinu. Just being overwhelmed with joy to the point of laughter. Because the laughter is the action or the response to the breaking out of the confines. He's no longer confined by the stricture of continuity and continuity. He's just in the now. Nothing more joyous. It's not a secret of ekartol. (40:55) It's a secret of the Maharal. V'lchach, yomar, not even of the Maharal, it's Yitzchak avinu. V'lchach, yomar, az yimale schok pinu, When will their mouth s be full of schok? When will Yitzchak resound in the entirety of creation? Az. You thought that meant "then their mouth will be filled with joy." No. It meant "now." What do you mean, now? Right now? No, we're in olam hazeh. When you're living in the continuum and continuity of time, you're living in olam hazeh, but when you're completely present to now, you're in the only contact point we have with eternity, because the only contact point we have with eternity is, of course, the now, which is eternally present. It's always now. And when you live it's always now, you live joy. You live schok, which is the breakout of confines, expression of simchah. And so he tells us, ze ka'ashe haolam b'shleimut v'lo yihybo shinu she hu shayach l'zman. Aval yiyah haolam, but the entirety of the planet will be, c'mo ha'atah. All of creation will just be the now. That's the world to come. That's az.
And here is the deepest thing. This is called in the kabbalah when gevurah goes up to binah. Meaning, az, which is gemtria eight, which is the aleph, or the imah, that is standing above the seven which is the seven midot that are beneath her, when gevurah rises up to there, so then the empty vacuous chalal becomes known as it's all filled with Him. That's when there's great joy. But it's only for those who have experienced and are willing to be in the empty nothing of prodding through life and history, who then discover that it's all been Him always, and nothing ever changed, Which is something I can just say now, but it's a consciousness that is not a consciousness that we're currently in. But it's the right now. Because right now, everything is perfect. This, by the way, the Arizal teaches that the bracha we say in the morning, hanotein l'sechvi vinah, l'havin bein yom u'ven layla means, sechvi is a gever, it's a cock. Sechvi. That's gevurah. He gives. We bless G-d for having given gevurah, the mentality or the consciousness of binah, which is where instead of the empty space being empty it's full of His life, it's rechem, and that has two possibilities and two aspects and their both good. One is the rechem, which is the empty space has now beomce the place of birthing, new life, but on the higher level of binah, when she's actually receiving from abba, when she's actually receiving from chochmah, is that she's not pregnant with life. She is life. It's not waiting for something. It's right here, because there is no time.
(So she's pregnant…)
One aspect is pregnant, that is there is something waiting to be born at this moment. But the other consciousness is, it's not something waiting to be born at this moment, it's all right here now. Which is the truth of there's something waiting to be born of this moment. Because the truth of there's something waiting to be born of this moment, is that it's right here right now, you just have to open your eyes and you'll see it, buddy. Pokeach ivrim, the next bracha, just open your eyes, L'havchin bein yom uvein layla. Give sechvi gevurah, the power of binah, to distinguish between night and day, to see the daytime that you thought was night. These higher levels of consciousness are really meditatative states which are the blessing of shabbat, which is me'ein olam habah, which is when everything is done, there's nothing left to be done. And ironically, by the teaching of schok of Yitzchak, who because he entered the empty space and became an other and an independent entity, can realize the joy of knowing that there was never anything else but Him. But because the way we are built and constructed, so if you don't live your life fully human, fully as other and fully with all the pain of that and all the longing of that, and all of being the kallah of G-d, as the one who is longing for Him form the empty space, so then you will never become the kallah of G-d, the bride of G-d who is completely absorbed into him as having been completely mitbatel into His being, which is the other meaning of the word kallah.
Don't ever think that you can skip stages. You can't walk out on life. You gotta live it fully. If you haven't experienced the pain and the suffering of the emptiness. If you haven't experienced the hurt of another person insulting you, betraying you, walking away from you, if you haven't experienced the longing of not having your mate, not having the one you'll have living (57:38) If you haven't experienced the longing of a life feeling empty of His presence and He's gone, and I'm alone, and it's dark here, if you haven't experienced that, then you will not experience the other realization of az. That's the way He made it. Because only in that longing are we aroused the consciousness of He is here. But if you skip it and you try to ignore it, and you pretend it's all okay, no, everything's fine, and that kid suffering, that's meant for him. And, no it's okay, you know, like I’m fine with it, whatever. And don't pass through the stage of the midot, which are the seven midot of emotional experience, that's the zayin of the word az, if you don't pass through those movements of seven movements, from malchut up to chesed, so you won't arrive at the aleph of the az of binah and chochmah together—which is the way the kabbalah describes it which is that they never separate—of knowing the now.
Oh, He was always there, is about the best that we can always say and pronounce it as being. That's the az yimaleh schok pinu. When? Higdil hashem, when even the goyin say, she yomru hagoyim higdil hashem la'asot im eleh, even the goyim, even those consciousness, which are of separateness and otherness and outsideness and even antagonism to the will of G-d. When even they see it. It's talking about us. It's not talking about them, It's talking about us when all those aspects of ourselves which are ego-ic that block this realization, when even they see it, higdil hashem la'asot im eleh, then we enter the place of now and joy.
There's a deep sod in this verse. And that deep sod is that the Zohar teaches in the hakdamah, that the word eleh actually comes from the word elokim. You take a look at the word, the aspect of G-d, which creates the space, which allows there to be differentiation and diversity, which is the word eleh, so you'll see, eleh hen, is elokim. So the Zohar teaches that when a person raises up his eyes, su marom einechem, R'u mi barah eleh, the question, mi barah eleh, this and this does this. Because when a person asks the question, mi barah eleh, Who has made these? He is already on his way to filling that space with the presence of Elokim. That's why the first verse Bereshit barah elokim divides into bereshit mi barah eleh. In the beginning, Who, that's her name, mi, barah eleh, Who made all of these. Who? The one of whom you can only speak of by saying who. Mi. And in opening to the question, we actually create the chalal. And then when you create the chalal, and dwell or shoheg in that, like we were practicing last week, and then ask the question, Who? So you're [al?]ready on the move from gevurah up to binah, and that empty space becoming not only pregnant with possibility, which is the next stage, understanding the pregnance of possibility that this moment offers, but then the higher level of knowing that it's all here right now. And there's nothing else but who?
(Can you explain again the concept of kallah? I'm not sure I understand it.)
I'd love to. (Singing a Chabbad niggun) The concept of the kallah is explained here in the Baal Hatanya, and also in the Sefer Tanya and the Likutei Torah in the following passage here at the beginning of your sheets.
The Baal Hatanya explains, as a continuation of what we once learned here, in verse Shir hashirim asher l'shlomo, yishakeini m'nishikot pihu. What is the origin of song? The Song of Songs. The origin of song, of all the songs that are sung, is the oscillation between the consciousness of I am here longing for you, and the higher consciousness of that there is nothing other than you. The oscillation between longing for you, and there's nothing other than you. There's nothing to long for, because you're right here, is the origin of all song. All songs are rooted in that. And it's why they go up and down, up and down. (Singing) No song, unless there's movement of ratzo v'shov. Of the longing and the pining for Him, and the return to Him, and then the leaving Him for the separated consciousness which He has declared for us. And so the Baal Hatanya teaches (1:07:22) hineh noldah she hakadosh baruch hu nikrah hachatan, you know, G-d is the husband, groom, ukneset yisrael nikrah b'shem kalah, and the Jewish people, knesset yisrael, all our souls, as the Jewish souls are the kallah of G-d. And that's because it comes by the name of hamshachah v'hashpatah torah l'yisrael. The Torah comes down as the chatan's giving, as it says, the day he married us was Matan Torah, that's why someone who give joy to a chatan gets Torah. That's the or ein sof, the eternal and infinite light coming down. ukneset yisrael, which is our focus now, us, longing and loving G-d, is the makor of nishmot yisrael, vkein kol nitzotz m'yisrael b'frat hi b'chinat kala every single one of us is a bride to G-d. hineh kalah yesh lah shenei perushim and kalah has two interpretations. Harihon m' lashon kilyon. The first one is from the language of being completely mitbatel, I can't think of a word for it, really like lost, burned up, kilyon, she m'chaleh um'valeh hakol mi lashon kalah. All burned up, as Yonatan explained this, kalah she'eri my flesh is just gone. Ki milat kalah hi shem davar ha moria pula rakah, zakah, dakah, etc. hasheni milashon habet hasheni milashon kalta nafshi, that my soul pines for you, yearns for you, hainu tchukat hanefesh lida b'leiku bi kalah kalah boro yitbarach. The intense desire and longing of the soul to become at one with G-d's light, as it says, v'elishech tchukatech as it says about woman, that she has a desire for her husband. So these are two different aspects of kallah, one is that she's completely dissolved into him, and the other is that she lives separate from him, longing for him. And the truth is we say this in kriyat shema v'hainyan d'hineh b'kiryat shema yesh shtei b'chinot mesirut nefesh you know there's two ways of giving yourself over to G-d. Harishon limsor et nafsho b'echad, when one goes and says to G-d, there's nothing else than You, there's no one else but You, I am completely not, there is no I to be saying "I am completely not." There's only You. The aspect of yachid. Only you. I'm dust. I'm ashes on the altar. And then the second is v'ahavta bchol nafshecha, And you shall love Him with all of your life force. Which you cannot do unless you maintain a presence of your life force. There cannot be a lover unless there is one who loves. Afilu natel et nafshecha. You are willing to give it all up for Him, but you are aware enough of yourself that giving it all up for Him means giving something up. These are two things. And to understand them and to understand how it is that the kriyat shema has us moving down, it seems, from having been completely at one and absorbed in His being, to having separate existence, standing apart from him, longing for Him and giving ourselves over to Him, (1:11:47) achar bechinat mesirut nefesh b'echad she harei v'havaktiv sof parshat netzavim lir? vahavat hashem elokecha ki hu chayecha because after all, it says at the end of parsha netzavim to love G-d because he is your life—that means you experience your life. That means you experience your life. Aval halo mesirat nefesh ul'hashlich hay aminege tchu bitul metziut l'or ein sof mamash, I don't get it. How is it that you start there and then you come down there? Those are the two aspects, and it's the oscillation between them that we've been touching some of today. That produces songs, and that is Shir Hashirim and B"H next time we'll continue into this ma'amar and see how it is that the second is the higher level. But we've already come to know that. That is a G-d who seeks out our love for Him and to express His love for us, Who has actually given to us, what would actually appear to be the lower consciousness so that we can live out His divine purpose. That's yehi hashem l'olam yismach hashem b'maasav.
Or, the way Yitzchak Avinu teaches that atah hashem avinu goaleinu meolam shemcha, Your name, meaning your expression outward was always within You, you always had a desire that we should be, it's from within You, Your name, even before there was a world, there was Your name, at one with you. And so when Your name appears in the world, which is us, about which we say, Baruch shem k'vod malchuto l'olam vaed, blessed is your name, and become realized as His name, so then Yitzchak says, well, meolam shmecha, you know G-d, Your name was always. Meaning, even before there was a world, You and Your name are one, and even after there's a world, You and Your name are one. But the world will only know that when all of the goyim know that, whether they be the external goyim or the internal goyim, come to know that and can forgive. And therefore love. And know it all as one.
(Can you be more clear the difference between the akeidah, which is I have become ashes, and giving the other cheek.)
You're looking for a greater clarity around this forgiveness thing. Does that mean that when I've been slapped, I don't respond? There are levels like that. This is a subject which deserves it's own clarity, maybe; I have some ideas about that. I think that's a really important shifting, knowing that it's all G-d and not biting back at the stick. And yet, also to know how to respond from the human consciousness of responding rightly. It has something to do with shiviti hashem l'negdi tamid, of knowing that it's all G-d, but knowing that l'negdi, the knegdo, that I'm called upon to live a separate consciousness, but I'm also able to know shivyon, that all is equally G-d. B"H we'll speak some of that out and also do some work around that.

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Synopsis: How Yitzchak's fear/reverence of G-d creates a context in which love can come about.

Episode Transcript

It might help me to tell you that I'm feeling a little bit overwhelmed by the things I want to give over to you. With that said, I'll launch into what I believe is an appropriate continuation of we were exploring last time we met. And it revolves around the nature of how we become able to love and especially focused right now on how that happens with our relationship with Hakadosh Baruch Hu. And last time we spent time focused on the vulnerability that Hakadosh Baruch Hu allows for in His making of an other who can say no. And I want to continue with that this time and go into it more deeply.
(Getting Chumashim with Rashi) The way I want to go about this is by introducing you to the idea of din in the world. The processes by which what we call din—judgment, gevurah, power—and that actually functions in a way in which we normally see that as being anitithetical to aspects of life that are love–oriented that have to do with chesed, with life enhancement, giving life, and yet, there is a most profound phenomenon, one of the deepest ironies by which we live: in order for there to be a relationship in which there will be a giver and a receiver, so there needs to be a withdrawal. By which I mean—and it's something we're all able to experience and know—if I truly desire the beloved, not that I should desire to be able to love, so then I need to withdraw myself, so that the beloved may become who he or she needs to become.
And this, I'm going to pick up where we left off last time, the way Shlomo HaMelech begins Shir Hashirim, and he says, Shir Hashirim asher l'Shlomo, this is the Song of Songs of Shlomo, yishakeini m'neshikot pihu. Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth. Ki tovim dedecha mi yayin. Because Your dodim, Your love, is greater than wine. And if you look at that verse, you notice, that this is the Song of Songs of Shlomo, yishakeini m'neshikot pihu is said in the third person, Ki tovim dedecha mi yayin. And then in the second person, because Your love is greater than wine. M'neshikot pihu. Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth. We're talking to G-d. Ki tovim dedecha mi yayin. Because Your dodim, Your love, is greater than wine. And so in the verse, there is a shift from speaking to Him in the third person to speaking to Him in the second person. And this, if you remember , we explained, has something to do with, well as the Rabbis put it, a very profound difference between Torah she b'al peh, and Torah she b'dichtav, the Oral Law, and the Written Law, as it's usually reported as being. See, the depth of the difference between the Oral Law, and the Written Law is not that one is passed down orally and the other is passed down in writing (a phenomenon that is the result of something that's profoundly different about them), but rather that the Written Law refers to things which are directly given and revealed by G-d in the "face-on" relationship with G-d speaking face-to-face with Moshe, as the verse says, panim el panim, G-d spoke to him face-to-face.
The Oral Law doesn't come about by G-d's revealing His face at all, but rather by G-d withdrawing, so that we should become those who will grow and create and develop by living in a space vacated from G-d's direct revelation, so that creativity will now be possible for those who live without a face-to-face contact with G-d. Let me say that a little more slowly.
(What did you say about the Written Law?)
The Written Law is what G-d, like I'm speaking to you now, says to you directly, which is what Moshe says directly. There's no real space there for you and what you need to become, create, and say, and what your life needs to say, and your particularity and specificity. Come on. The Law's the law, nothing to say, open the book, done. This is the Law, this is a chok, this is set in stone, literally. That's the nature of the Written Law. The fact of it being written is an indication of that. It's handed down in writing because that's the way it really is in its essence. But that's its essence. He's telling you like it is.
But then there's this spaces (sic) In fact (8:53) one of the ways Rashi points this out is that the spaces between the words and sentences are very dear. And they express G-d's endearing, for instance, at the beginning of Vayikra, where it says Vayikra el Moshe, we're told that G-d told to Moshe, and He called him by his name. You should know that's a very crucial passage there at the beginning of Vayikra, because it describes how G-d reveals most of the Torah, from the Tent of Meeting to Moshe. Rashi reveals that he is called out by his name, yes, and there's another few statements that Rashi makes, but the important one I want to point out is the following. He says that He called to Moshe, the voice would come to his ears, the rest of the Jewish people didn't hear. Might it also be that G-d called Moshe for the spaces in between?
(What do you mean, "the spaces in between"?)
I'm just reading literally now. Because the spaces in between comes to tell you vay'daber. Called him for the speakings but not for the waitings. Well now, then what were the waitings for? Answer: To give Moshe a chance to integrate and to contemplate between teaching and teaching, and between one matter and the next.
Certainly, Rashi goes on, when a regular person teaches and learns from a regular person; every time G-d spoke to Moshe, He would speak and wait. The waiting is the withdrawal, which allows for the moment during which Moshe Rabbeinu will himself be able to identify with and integrate what's been spoken. Okay, one level. The deeper level of the spaces in between, or the one we experience, are the space in between G-d having revealed Himself at Sinai, and the rest of history. The rest of history is one long pause, during which G-d is not speaking to us directly, but has rather withdrawn His direct revelation so that we should be mitbonen, which is to contemplate, draw out implications, draw out applications, creatively become involved in the process of revealing His word. So, that withdrawal is actually the path to the empowerment of the other to become what they are meant to become. In the case of G-d, ironically, withdrawal is what is necessary for us to reveal His own voice. His own revelation. But that's a complicating factor when it comes to G-d, so we'll put it aside for the moment and keep it first in what we know for life about how crucial it is.
You see, oftentimes people mistake love for doting on someone, for being always there for them, for constantly being connected to them. That's devaikut. That's davak b'ishto. As you may remember, we saw in the Ramban, that couples completely couple together in communing. There's a constant awareness of the presence. That's what it's meant by Vdavak b'ishto. You know that Rashi says that therefore the man leaves his father and mother, joins his wife, and they become one flesh. That is that they are always in communion with one another. That's powerful and deep and connected to a relationship of love. But if that's all there is, then there cannot be love. And the reason for this is that love requires withdrawal, so that there can be an other whom I love. And that other must have the space within which to develop into that person of fullness, because they can blossom into the fullness they were meant to be by virtur of having been given the area and the arena in which that can happen.
See, this is another aspect of what we were exploring last week when Adam Harishon has to discover his loneliness and the lack in order to truly enter relationship. That's from his perspective. But now we're looking at it from the perspective of the recipient of that love. If it would not be that there is a provision of space for you to be who you need to become, so that's not love, because I’m not allowing you to be the one who I'm in love with. Well, this is the way G-d made His world. And from the very beginning, there's the peculiar dance between ahava and deveikut, between love and full communion. With love involving actually a withdrawal which allows room for the other to be. And communion, deveikut, involving a full communing with that beloved. Do you have a little bit of a picture? Good, I really like it that I can just talk this way. But hopefully we'll bring it down even more alive for you.
Let's appreciate this rather incredible dynamic upon which the world is created. This is the dynamic, that according to the Rabbis, Shlomo HaMelech is referring to when he says, "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth." Because your love is greater than the love of wine, meaning the following: When in the third person, so to speak, I'm experiencing You—Him—kissing me with His mouth, that He has withdrawn. That's why it's in the third person, as withdrawn. When I'm experiencing Him kissing me with His mouth—third person—ah. Your love, I'm now experiencing You very intimately, Your love is dearer than the love of wine.
And if you remember, I explained to you that wine is the Written Torah, the direct revelation, when He is totally with us, davek with us. Like we say, v'atem hadeveikim bashem elokeichem, like the Rabbis say, deveikim mamash, truly deveikim, as it says in the Gemara in Sanhedrin, truly davek, like a flask has its cover at one with it. Glued to it, so that it's one piece with it. That's how the Rabbis actually describe that deveikut. A full oneness in communing, as opposed to the tovim dodecha, your love which comes from when you have withdrawn, is greater than the wine, which we say is the Written Toah, meaning that it's that which sits—that's how they read that verse.
(Who's they?)
The Rabbis. It's a Gemara or midrash that reads this pasuk this way. Yishakeini m'neshikot pihu, let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth, that's the Torah she b'aal peh. Ki tovim dedecha—the Torah she b'al peh—is greater than yayin. So that there's a process of Him withdrawing, third person, and then I'm experiencing His love, His dodim, in the second person of Him begin near to me. And that experience, the third person to the second person, is far more dear than the wine, which the Rabbis say is the Written Torah.
I'm bringing that as an illustration of the way G-d has made His world, and that is that, quite astoundingly, in order for there to be a space in which we can exist, He needs to withdraw. And that withdrawal is known as the tzimtzum. And that tzimtzum is an act of din. (Passing out sheets) The Chasdei David, who was one of the great mkubalim, says, (19:35) T'chilat hakol haya or ein sof baruch hu pashut. V'ein davar panui mimenu. In the very beginning, the infinite light of G-d was utterly simple, and there was nothing empty of Him and His presence. When there was an arousal of His will to create worlds, whatever that is, and how that came about, that there should be a knowing of Him. So He contracted Himself, and left an empty space in the middle. These are all geometric terms that are meant to arouse some level of undertstanding. U'vmakom hahu he'etilu kol haolamot. And in that place He eminated all the worlds. And that tzimtzum is the root of din. Din being that which is the power to give things a place that is appropriate to them. To mete out what is appropriate to them by making space for them. See, in my meting out to you by virtue of my making space for you, so I am actually acting from the principal from din, as opposed to from the principal of chesed, which is a flat, undifferentiating awarding of existnece.
So the way this is working now, that in order for G-d to make an other with whom there can be a relationship of love, so there must first be a relationship of withdrawal. So the Rabbis say the following: it's quoted here also in Rashi, that bereshit barah elokim, the name of elokim which refers to him as din, is the creator of heaven of earth. At the beginning, G-d thought to create it in din only, And then he joined to it the midah the rachamim. That's the Rashi here. Even hikdim the midah of rachamim, he even preceded everything with the midah of compassion. Now here's the catch, and it's a beautiful one. The word rachamim is the same word that we use for womb, woman, her uterus, her place of carrying a baby. That's exactly it. The mother withdraws herself, so to speak, from occupying all the space of her body, in order to allow that there should be an other that will become formed within her, and so her uterus is, so to speak, the sod of the tzimtzum, that allows there to be an other to be formed within in. That's the depths of shitafei midat harachamim (22:56). He actually created a whole context for this withdrawl, that it should be a place within which life will form.
Now, the reason this is important to me for us to recognize is because of there is whole principal that is going on that is withdrawal leads to creative love; withdrawal leads to relationship and is necessary for it. It's a simple point, but it's one which is not always so available to us, I mean when we're raising children, when we're in relationship with another. And certainly, living in this consciousness, when it comes to our relationship with G-d is very challenging, and we'll see why and how that is as we go along.
This is all sort of by way of introduction. And what I want to do with you today is explore the experience of the personification of this through Yitzchak Avinu. The way I want to do that is maybe a little bit odd at first. To take a look at one of the readings of Yitzchak, which is the only story in the Chumash where he appears to be active. And I want us to understand something. You see, it's important to know about the avot, that they are archetypes in the sense that the avot are the lived qualities and principals that we are describing. If we want to learn about Yitachak, then we need to understand what it is to live as the withdrawn one. In other words, the one who experiences in the depth of his being, G-d's having withdrawn to make space.
So that he knows that indeed G-d is the infinite one for whom, when he is present, there is no room for any other, and that G-d, so to speak, sacrificed Himself to make room for us. You can see that in his life, in the way he sacrificed himself to make room for G-d. But he deeply experiences this phenomenon that there is none other than He, than G-d. And this is the experience of the Akeidah, and we've seen this in the past. Hakadosh Baruch Hu coming to Yitzchak to tell him, "You will no longer live," really leaves him speechless. What is he going to say? There is nothing he is going to say to Hakadosh Baruch Hu at that moment, because he has no entitlement to life. G-d is freely and lovingly giving him life at every moment, just like every one of us. He experiences that more deeply than anyone else because there was never anyone who G-d came to and said, through his father, that the one who gave him life in this world, you are not going to live. I am going to take your life away from you, and there was no one who had the experience with such trauma that there is nothing that you could say that would justify your right to continue living.
I mean, after all, what would you say, that I've done a lot of nice things in the world? Where is that going to go? The life that you did all those nice things with is the very life given to you by the One who is now saying, It's finished, it's enough, gone. –But there are many more things that I want to do! –Well, I don't want you to do them. In that dialogue, there is only the space for the consciousness that it's all G-d, it's all Him, there is really no essential existence to anything than His existence.
So Yitzchak knows this, and Yitzchak experiences more deeply than anyone that G-d has, so to speak, made space for us. Now if you understand Yitzchak as being the one who lives that, then Yitzchak is the one who, so to speak, makes space. What is that like, being the one who is always making space?
(Very humble)
Very humble. So look at something really interesting about Yitzchak's appearance on the stage of activity. And what I'm talking about is chapter twenty-six, verse twelve through fourteen. This is where we find him actually doing something. But we have to look very carefully about (sic) what it is he is doing, and how the Chumash describes that doing.
So Yitzchak sows and plants in that land, and he found in that year one hundred portions, and G-d blessed him. And he gets very great, and he gets even greater, until he got really really great, he's gotten really big. And then he had a lot of possessions, and because he had a lot of possessions, so the plishtim are jealous of him. In verse fifteen, it says that all the wells he had dug, that his father had dug, actually, well, the plishtim had filled them up with afar. Avimelech says to Yitzchak, get lost. You're too big, we're not going to allow you to be here any more.
So Yitzchak goes away and he encamps in Nachal Grar, and that's where he lives. Yitzchak goes back, and he redigs the wells that his father had dug, or that had been dug in his father's time, and that the plishtim had filled in, we already know about them, that the plishtim had already filled them in after Avraham had died, and he called them the same names that his father had called him . So Yitzchak was a reflection of his father, and he was, in a sense, continuing his way and maintaining what his father had brought into the world—these wells—at least in this aspect.
Then his servants, they dig wells, and there is an argument with the plishtim and then there is another well that his servants dig, and there is another argument about it, and then he goes and he digs one, and its rechovot, it's very broad. Why? He says, because now G-d has made breadth, and we can truly multiply in this land. G-d has made space so that we can be fruitful and multiply. It's exactly the picture of G-d has made space. And all of this activity of Yitzchak is nothing more than making space. It looks like he's doing something, but actually, regarding his father, being a conduit through which his father's work will be maintained and continued, and in terms of the earth, he is digging away to allow what is there to become revealed. He's not really doing anything. He's the one who is making the chalal panui. He's digging away the earth so that the waters that are there, should be able to flow forth. Even his planting, the way the Torah describes it, he's plans, and then, wow! he finds in that year, in that place, a hundred times what he could have expected G-d bless it all (sic) 32:31. That isn't me, I didn't do this. I just found it. Vayimtza bashanah hahi.
But what I think is most interesting is the way in which the Torah orders the story. Take a look at this. If you were having to order the verses in the story—
There is a thing you do when you're trying to teach a kid how to write compositions, so you take a paragraph, and you mix up all the sentences, and you try to figure out which sentence goes before what. So, take a look at verse fifteen. Where should verse fifteen go? All of the wells that have been dug by his father's servants, the plishtim had covered them up. Those next two verses are out of place, because the next move that is in response to that is eighteen, right? It says that Yitzchak goes back and digs the new wells, or he digs the wells of his father. So that description of what needed to be done, or what was wrong, should then be described after that by what he then went and fixed. Everyone agree on that? Those two sentences in the middle, they are not supposed to be there.
But they are. If you leave the perspective of Yitzchak, they are. Because even the way life unfolds, is so to speak, it's not your doing, it's that there's these filled-up wells which need clearing. Well, let me tell you a story. Avimelech comes to Yitzchak and tells him that it's time for him to move on. So Yitzchak moves on. And where does he end up? Right near his father's wells that need to be cleared out. You hear? It's not like it happened that he had this situation with Avimelech and then he goes to the place where the wells are, but rather that he needed to get to where the wells are, so the situation with Avimelech erupted to get him to the place where the wells are. That's the way the Torah tells you the story. First it needs to be corrected. Then it tells you the story unfolding, which gets him to the place where he needs to be.
(Technically, I'm confused. Where are the wells, and where is he?)
He's been in the land of the plishtim,
(So the wells are in the land of the plishtim)
No, the wells are in the land of Grar, where he now goes to.
(So he returned…)
Either he's going back to eretz plishtim,
(Well, how can the plishtim be filling them up, if they're not in their own—)
Territory? It's a question. I'm not sure I understand vayashov yitzchak vayachpor et be'erot hamayim asher yachfru bimei avraham that he went back and redug the wells which had been dug in the time of his father. That's the vayashov. Why is it that the plishtim were taking such vigorous interest in what he's doing in Nachal Grar,
that needs to be looked at better. But I think the simple meaning of the word vayashav is that he went back and dug again what his father had dug.
(Pasuk yud ayin, you said they should be there.).
They need to be there at some point, because they tell the story of how Yitzchak had to leave and ended up, in the way I'm reading, going to the place where Avraham had dug wells. I don't know why they would fill in those wells. I actually have something I want to say about the nature of his relationship with the plishtim, but that needs to be better clarified.
(They were jealous…)
They were jealous. Something that's going on between them and Yitzchak that makes them into his primary antagonists. Yeah, Chaya?
(According to the Gur Aryeh, the wells were located in the valley of Grar while the valley had been un inhabited, the plishtim would stop them up to withhold them from the attacking armies. When Yitzchak moved to the valley (unclear because someone is moving a chair) 37:51
B'seder, that was the Maharal's perush on Rashi. So we have two things. The most important thing right now is to see how the story unfolds through Yitzchak. It's something that needs to happen, and it will happen through him, but not by virtue of his doing, but rather by virtue of its needing to be done. Which will be done. Okay, if you like the point, good. It's not crucial. I think it's important to see how the Torah has ordered the things.
Yitzchak is the man who digs out space. His is the life of a man who is nothing more than space. He is that open space. Now, the interesting thing is, that there is a very deep quandry, problematic (sic) that we live in our relationship with
G-d, Who has made space for us, and that is—get this— you see, the more you live out being in that space, which is a consciousness that He is not here so that I can be here, well, the farther you are from Him. Again, the more you live out the space of being in that space which G-d has vacated so that you can be here, so in a certain level, the further away you are from Him. The less you live the consciousness of separateness and individation, so the closer you are with Him, the more at one you are with Him. I'll put it to you in life, although it's not exactly parallel. The more your lover has distanced himself in order that you should have room to become who you must become, the more you become who you become, the more distant you are from the one who you're wanting to be with.
It's even deeper with G-d. In order for us to live this life, viewing ourself as separate and independent entitites, so we need to live it, so to speak, with a consciousness which blocks out the all-present infinite presence of G-d in which there's no space for another. And the truth of what tzimtzum is, more deeply than
G-d's withdrawing. It's He who has given us a consciousness and awareness which has it be as if He is not here. See, it's our consciousness that He's given us that creates the reality which we experience as being one in which He is not here.
I'll try to make this a little less wacko-sounding, I don’t know, but you see, our minds work on a certain frequency. We pick up certain things. We hear the clock ticking, we feel the table, we can see each other, because we're picking up what's around us on a frequency at which we pick it up at that level. There are other things going on in the room that we don’t pick up because we're not tuned to them. If our minds were actually like a radio tuner, we'd actually be hearing the news right now, probably the weather report, because there would be an attunement to something which we're not now attuned to, which then we could access and receive. We're all familiar with this, but we don't think about it that way. What's real is what we see and feel and touch and hear, and everything else isn't really real. Until we get into radio waves which, yeah, I guess it is real, so how come I'm not seeing it if it's not real? Well, there are realities which you can't see. Well, why don't I see them? Because you're not attuned to see them. You're not attuned to see infra-red, but if you would, then you might actually be able to see through the wall. See through the wall? What, are you off the wall? Yeah, I'm off the wall! I've actually inside the wall. (?) 43:36 Go to the other side of the wall. Why? Because I'm able to see with a frequency that sees right through matter. What, you wouldn’t see the matter? No, I wouldn't see the matter. Could it be that I would vibrate at a frequency where I wouldn't feel the matter either? You mean I could just walk through the wall? Like Superman? Yeah, if you would vibrate at a different frequency, then that's the way you would actually experience things. You wouldn't experience this as solid matter, which it barely is, you would just experience it as something which would pass right through.
(That's actually what scientists are working on.)
Yes, that's what scientists are working on. And they are probaly going to get there soon. Because it's not a big deal, it's just a matter of changing your frequency. And tune us up, just a little bit, and then our vibration shifts, and then the way we relate to matter shifts. Everything shifts. Everyone knows this, when your emotional state shifts. And all the people whom you thought were offensive and ugly or repulsive, suddnely, well, he's kind of okay, well half an hour ago you were—
Well, I was just in a bad mood. Now I'm in a different state. I'm picking up a different wavelength about my emotions and it's all shifting all the time. Emotions shift more than anything else. That's why they are kneged ruach in the four types of realities, so emotions are related to the wind, the air, as opposed to the ground, which is the body, okay, we're not going to go through them right now.
But we experience those shifts all the time because we're shifting our frequency. Just to say it in that simple sense, so you realize so maybe there would be like a divine frequency, when I don't see anything at all, but when I see things from a divine perspective? There is nothing but Him? Yes, there is such a thing. There is such a divine frequency, And you actually have a part of you that is always vibrating at that frequency. It's called the yechida. It's your highest level of soul. It's always at the frequency in which there is nothing but G-d. Wait a minute, but there is me, yeah? Right, just turn down the…..(talking slowly in a low voice) fre-quen-cy on…the…receiver, and everything comes back to independent and separate realities. In fact, in Chassidut it's taught that the tzimtzum really is a phenomenon of our consciousness. That we see things as separate. And it's the great gift of G-d that we should. It's not that it's a hazayah, an illusion, that I see you. Just like it's not an illusion when I pick up the radio waves. But there's a reality which is sort of a different vibration, frequency, in which you're not there. There's only G-d. There's only his presence. Now, on a ceratin level, the more I saw you, so the less I see Him. If I could just tune up my frequency and only see Him, then I wouldn't see you, you're in the way. I'm in the way. This is a painful irony, probably one of the most painful ironies and paradoxes of spiritual life. And it had lead all kinds of spiritualities to all kinds of crazy conclusions. Including the conclusion of maya, of illusion. Because, I'll put it like this (48:05)…if the world were with no willing Creator, if it wasn't that G-d had a will, then indeed the fact that you're there is just an illusion, we're just not tuned to the highest, most pristine and true frequency. So you're an illusion, you're in the way. (Pause) I'm just talking to myself. (Laughter). But if One who made all that consiousness, which is the consciousness we all live, the One Who has a will and desires that we should have it, well, that changes everything. Then it's not just some illusion. It's what He wills us to have. Yeah, but it's not real! Yes it is, It's as real as the one who is giving it to you, and He's the most real thing that is! Bad, thing, not a good word.
Do you hear that? It's G-d who's making us see things this way, that there is a place where He is not. That G-d, so to speak, Who is making us see things this way, is Elokim, that's the name Elokim. And it's why of all the names of G-d, it's the only one in the plural, Weird isn't it? We, the big monotheists, have a name for G-d that;s in the plural? That's bad, it shouldn't be that way. We have kel, shem havaya, but Elokim? And what's worse, that same word, if you think about many gods, that’s just elohim. Same word. Because multiplicity is a product of din, which is the withdrawal. But that withdrawal is the creation of a consciousness which will see things as if He is not there. It's like you've put on dark glasses. You're wearing now the polaroid glasses so that you're only picking up a certain reality. So now I want to shift out of that. I don't want to be apart from Him, I only want to be with Him. You just shift out of that and tune up to a place where all I know is Him. And be completely mitbatel, completely gone from my ego-consciousness which is creating a sense as if I'm separate from Him. I'm going to let that go. It's a sin to be in that state of separateness from Him, I'm going to let that go. No, wait a minute. He made me that I should have this consciousness. So, it would be a violation of the will of the very One that I'm seeking to come close to for me to strip myself of that consciousness so that it will be only with Him, because He made me such that I would see all of you and myself as separately and independently existing realities. So what do I do? To strip myself of that is to come close to Him. No it's not, it's a denial of His will. But to stay in this reality in which I don't have the experience of His being wholely and completely and fully present is to lose Him.
This is the paradox and ultimate tension within which any divinely-attuned human being lives. And Yitzchak, more than anyone, has really seen that there is nothing other than G-d. In Chassidut it's explained that he lives in a state of the yechida. That's why he's the one who's called bincha, yechidcha, your son, the only one, because he's actually living the "onlyness" of G-d.
But ironically, one who lives the onlyness of G-d, to become really close with Him—so to speak, by becoming like Him—has to live uniqueness here. So he becomes the unique one. And this is because, when one realizes that it's G-d whose wanting me to have this consciousness of separate individuated realities, then I am now going to give ultimate and full reverance to every single unique being that is here desired by G-d to be here. See, someone who's never experienced that as only G-d will never be able to experience the ultimateness and value and worth of every single creature that G-d has made here, because he will never know how much G-d, so to speak "gave up that He should contract himself, that we should be here, or how much, so to speak, G-d has awarded us by giving us the reality as living as a separate entity. This is why din always also is the origin of yirah, reverence. Of being fully aware of the divinity of the other. And always dances around the smallest of myself (55:39) or on a different level, the ultimate worth of myself. Where, depending on whether you're experiencing the all-present G-d or the small nothingness of myself, or G-d Who has withdrawn to make space for me! And is therefore living a full and deep relationship of responsiveness, which is what din is, when I'm responding to you. What you do, I do to you. That's when things become energetically connected in relationship. So that it's either all abnegation, or the full and whole presence of another to whom I respond. Because G-d, making that person now, he can't have come from anywhere else, if it weren't that G-d were making him now, giving him that consciousness now of existing as a separate entity, giving me the consciousness now to see him as a separate entity.
Should we have a little interaction here? Should I give you people a little space? (57:15)
Could I just treat you to one more thing here? Why don't you ask your questions.

(You said that Hashem cannot feel the specialness of every animal?)
Chas v'shalom, I didn't say that.
You said creatures.
Okay, Kol hanivraim. Yesh lahem erech muchlachat, mipne she haboreh olam hu machlit bchol regah latet lahem et he yishut shelahem. Vmachlit bchol regah, He is deciding at every moment to give me to see Him as separate from Him. You can hear now why if you just rest in this a bit. You can hear why the phlishtim are Yitzchak's greatest antagonist.
Here's a deep thing that's really wild. The Rabbis say that phlishtim are leytsanim. They are mockers, scoffers, cynics. And they teach this in a wild place. There's a Gemara in Avodah Zarah, page eighteen. I'm starting to realize that I have another two hours of talking here. We'll divide it up. So the Rabbis say, Ashrei haish asher lo halach b'atzat reshaim u'bderech chataim lo amad. And b'moshav laytzim lo yashav. So you have this verse which is the way that David Hamelech opens up Tehillim He says, Happy is the man, or well-estabilshed is the man who didn't walk in the ways of the reshaim. And he didn't walk in the ways of the chotim and he didn't sit among the scoffers. Hm. So, he didn't walk like reshaim walk, he didn't stand like chotim stand, and he didn't sit like latzim sit. (Laughing) That's great. So the Gemara says, this is all about Avraham, who didn't walk the walk of those reshaim who built the tower of Babel. Nor did he stand the standing of the people of Sodom, about whom it says that they were raim l'chataim, nor did he sit the sit of leytsim, namely the plishtim. All right, what's the deal? So the Maharal says that the reshaim anre people who are actively evil, they go and do bad things. Chataim are people who withdraw from doing good. That's why the word choteh means a lack. Pull back, like the anshei Sodom don't give Tzedakah.
And then there are the leytsim, they just sit, they're the scoffers. They just sit back and laugh, What, are you crazy? What, are you nuts? You think this really means something? It's all just a empty black hole, there's nothing here! What, do you think you're going to get close to G-d. What are you trying for? Smirking at anything that anyone tries to do. Sit kind of sit back and, why would you even try to move, or get up? You're just wasting your time. It's all just a figment of your imagination anyway. It's all just an empty hole. Nothing real can happen here. That's why the word phlisha actually menas to break through a hole, right? That's exactly what they do to reality, they break a hole in reality. Plisha, pleshet. It menas to clear it away. Why, you know what? Gee. They also dig holes in the sand, don't they, except the holes in the sand that they dig is all of the reality that you see. It's all just empty. Except for them, when they dig the hole, it doesn't reach water. Because mfulash means that it's open at both ends, just goes nowhere. Mefulash in Hebrew, hamavoi mefulash (1:03:21) is one which is opened at both ends, it's just totally broken through, there's no water at the end of it, there's nothing there. What do you think? What, are you crazy?
And guess what the chachamim say. Where do we know that the plishtim are leystim, scoffers, from? It says about the anshei plishtim, vayhi, katovli bam. When they were like really feeling good in the time of Shimshon, vayomru, kiru l'shimshon. Call Shimshon in, vayisachek lanu, and let him make us laugh. Oh my goodness, let him make us laugh. And this is the risk that Yitzchak lives, to laugh a laugh of scoffing. Because the one who knows there's an empty space, we live in empty space, knows that the realness of it is only by virtue of an awarded consciousness, which is only seeing things on a certain frequency. So why bother doing anything. There's really nothing to be born here. Nothing happening. And in fact, Yitzchak's name is a result of two kinds of laughter, his mothers' laughter and his father's laughter.
And anyone who's ever sought a chauvinistic interpretation in the Bible, well, he's got to be bothered by Avraham and Sarah's laughing. Avraham's laughing, and that's great, and the Targum translates, he was overjoyed. Rashi says, ah, Avraham is a joy of fullness. And then Sarah laughs, and the malachim get there: Look, she's laughing! I didn't laugh—yes you did! I didn't laugh—yes, you did! You were scaffing(?) (1:05:52). What's going on here? Well my husband laughed! Shh. Quiet, get back in the tent! (Laughter all aroud) Until you look at what they say. There's also the male-female thing, that's also a part of it, but it's too complicated. So put that aside for now. But just look at what Avraham says: Could it be that a man of a hundred would give birth? Could it be that a woman of ninety would give birth? Astounding! You mean there can be birth out of this nothingness of my wife and of myself. Oh gosh, unbelievable, what joy. But Sarah says, it says, she looked at herself and she said, Me? After I've gotten so old? I would give birth? She's seeing herself in the dimunitive—I'm nothing, can't do it, forget it. Scoffing. Avraham is looking, You mean there was nothing and now there's something? Whoa. Unbelievable.
And Yitzchak, in a sense, can go either way, and you know why? On a certain level, he does. One son is called Esav. And the other one is called Yaakov, and we'll see, B"H, how these actually live out the life of scoffing, or of being present to, in full presence, with what something called tmimut(1:08:04). But tmimut which lives in the tent, lives in the consciousness which we have been awarded, but that maintains a connection with the one who has been awarding it at every moment.
Whereas Esav becomes the scoffer, vayivez, despises the bechora—You know why he despises the bechora? Because he really despises life The first born is just the gift of life. I'm going to be dead soon anyway, man , the whole thing is nothing. How long were you around? It's just nothing. Why would I want bechora. It's not just he's despising it because it's avodat Hashem—that's the result—is that he doesn't experience himself as one who would possibly find enough value in himself as being a servant of G-d , because life itself, how much have you got and what the heck is your life? Seventy, eighty; in our days—ninety years? You know how much ninety years is? It's a speck of nothing. That's Esav, that's why he's walking around tired and bored. The only he can find to entertain himself with is killing, which is denying reality, denying the other, taking away life.
That's why ultimately, with this we'll close, the Rabbis say, You know who the great-great grandson of Esav is? He's a man named Haman. And the Rabbis say, that same vayivez, et ha bechora that Esav despised—the "first-born-sonness"—became, many generations later, vayivez haman lishloach yad l'mordechai lvado. Haman despised killing Mordechai alone. And the Rabbis say, bazui ben bazui, the despised one, son of the despised one. That's Haman, who's the Amalakite, the great scoffers of reality. And what did he despise? That he kill one person. What the heck is one person? Man. If I'm going to kill, it might as well be an entire people. But the depth is, that vayivez, even though it says that he despised, the Rabbis say that he is the despised one, the despicable one, because anyone who despises, must also be experiencing himself as despicable on some level or another. You can't be despising another in their reality unless some place in your heart you're despising your own. So that the leytsanim are the great threat to Yitzchak. But that's not his life at all. B"H we'll see next time the real life of Yitzcahk and actually how he becomes the great source both of forgiveness, and of the ultimate valuing and adoration of life and other in reverence.
How are we doing? I'll just check in with where people are holding.
Confused? Enlightened by this? Or I need time to think about this, or this means something to me. I'm actually serious about the question.
(I feel like I'm internalizing it. Me too. I'm like, observing it. Really grateful.
You can be adversary. I need time to digest. It's big piece. It's beautiful.) Okay, that's a relief. I'm going to make closure now, then I'll take questions, then we'll take time for integrated work.
How this is all related to loving, is Yitzchak is the principal of making space for love to come about. He himself, in his relationship with G-d, the Rabbis teach, is not in a relationship of love. Because he experiences love as non-existent in the presence of G-d. To be a lover, you need to be in existence. But he knows the great love of G-d in having made space that there should be an other. (01:15:50) Because the whole reason G-d made space that there should be an other is an act of love that there should be an other with whom He will have a loving relationship. And this is the meaning of the beginning of the parshah, where it says, Eleh toldot Yitzchak, These are the generations of Yitzchak. Avraham holid at Yitzchak. Avraham who is the principal of love, he gave birth to Yitzchak, he gave birth to the principal of contraction and withdrawal. Because the whole reason for the contraction and withdrawal is that there should be the appearance of Avraham, the appearance of love and compassion. All this withdrawal is for that. So he serves that purpose in the withdrawal, just like withdrawal serves that purpose.
(So you're saying Yitzchak doesn't love Hashem?)
The Rabbis say that he lives in total awe of G-d. Avraham is the lover of G-d. Chas v'shalom to say that he doesn't love G-d, but that's not his, these are archetypes, and his archetype is fear and awe. That there's nothing but Him.
(That's what he represents.)
Right. But he is in the consciousness that that vacating of there is nothing but Him, when G-d does make that space for there to be a world of love, and that's why he is the first one to love his wife, because out of that he sees, Wow, if there's someone there, and I have the consciousness to see her? That means that G-d is really, really wanting this; really, really wanting her; really, really wanting me. And so he experiences the depth of an other and himself with far greater intensity that anyone else can in their uniqueness and in their utter separateness. See, this is his power and it all is derived from a G-d who desires a world in which there should be love, and therefore again, paradoxically and ironically, withdraws Himself so that it may be. On a certain level, we blow this as parents, very often, when we think our children need us taking care of them, doting on them, watching them, guarding them, directing them, all the time, feeling our love for them all the time by our being there for them all the time. All the time for them. That's deveikut. But love also requires the principal of withdrawal. But as parents, oftentimes, we're afraid to withdraw, because our kids might stop loving us. Oh, No! Yeah. If I withdraw, then my kid won't love me. Hm. So who are you loving exactly? If you're really loving them, then you have to let them grow. Of course, guide them, teach them, etc. (sic) But there's a shift in the drivenness in I'm always wanting them to know that I'm loving them, and loving them. Is it coming from your neediness? Or is it coming from your wholeness, that will determine that.
(I have a question about the zugim. Is it that Yitzchak and Rivka have like a giving and receiving side to each like sefirah that they represent?)
I'll tell you something about Rivka, and it's like a really amazing thing to know, that if you look at the way she's chosen. I'll choose two deep things and I'll try to say them really briefly, and you can listen up, we talked about this last year. B"H I'll put this up on a website. I have a website but I don't know how to operate it…
So,…the place the Rabbis learn that a woman has a say in the question of whether she gets married or doesn't get married to the man, is from Rivka. Up until then, you don't find the woman having any say, and he takes her, he takes her, he takes her, she gets pregnant, she gives birth, she gets pregnant, she gives birth, and they begat, and they begat. Begat, begin, begat, begin, right? But then, all of a sudden there's this wild scene where they say, Well of course we're going to send her with you; after all, it's clear that it's come from G-d. Scene two, wait a minute: what if she stays another year, or maybe a couple of months, or couple more weeks, and Eliezer says, No, no, it's time, it's time right now. Well, lo and behold they say, we have a drastic idea. Why don’t we call her in and ask her what she thinks. Ta dum! Woman liberated. She becomes the other. She becomes the knegdo. And this appears first with Rivka because she's going to be living with Yitzchak who's the vacated space. So she must be the one who is in power to stand on her own two feet and be able to say no. That's the only presence that he'll really be able to love, from the vantage point of the one who is vacated space.
Was she really three years old?
Yeah. The point is, this is very important about Rivka. That's why we explained that camels were a very important thing in the story. That's why her test was whether she would give the camels to drink, because camels are about independent standing…But that's the nature of Rivka. This is why, by the way, and then we'll end this. (Sighs) Someone's got to create a kli here, someone's got to stop me, otherwise I just keep on unraveling. But, um—anyone volunteering?
(I want you to keep going! [Laughter.])
What I really want to do is workshop work, because it's extremely vaulable. I'll just say one more thing. The reason why Eliezer goes out is, to seek the wife for Yitzchak, is a total representation of that. And that is that Avraham says to him, and very briefly, to go and get my (sic) wife from somewhere else. Well, maybe she won't come. Maybe she won't come? Of course she will come! G-d's going to send his angel who's certainly going to guarantee that this is going to be a success, and you're under oath, and you know what, if she doesn't come, then—forget the whole thing. That's mamash what Avraham says. You look at that and say, What? Where is his bitachon? And why isn't he certain that G-d is going to make it happen? Because you can't be certain that G-d is going to make it happen. You're dealing with another person, for whom there must be space within which to say, "no." And to know that and to know that it's all G-d, and it's His doing, and it's His reality, all at once. Sorry not to leave you with something clear, because it's not, it's a ratzo v'shov, back and forth, all the time, and it's from that space that real marriage comes about, and real love comes about, and the possibility for forgiveness comes about, too. I just want to remind us of what we want to look it. Okay. I'm stopping here.
(You were talking about multiplicity. I didn't get it.)
All I was saying was that din creates the possibilitiy that there will be significant others. So therefore there will be rebui, multiplicity, that there will be many. Chesed doesn't make room for many, chesed just gives existence. It's flat.
(So it's not real self-centeredness. It's that you have that room open for another person to exist.)
That's right. Okay.
(So in order to be able— I don't know, I just feel like they're… one extreme and another, so is the goal not to be able live simultaneously in duality where we see the delusion and past the delusion?
Yes, I would avoid calling it delusion.
(Okay, the creation?)
Yeah, and that will have everything to do with Yaakov.
(All right.)
Good.
(That's awesome, and I want to find some way to experience it, not making it too cerebral, not thinking about it, where we could (write out/ride out?) places where we don't see G-d in our lives in our world. We might think about this one and think, how does this distance create love? To apply that kind of question to it, and maybe do it in some kind of meditational form. That seems like intellectualizing it instead of experiencing it, I feel that it would be valuable to experience what you're talking about. To experience that G-d is not in this situation and how do I experience that as a gift?)
As His allowing me to become what needs to be for me as an act of love, and the way He allows that to be is in His withdrawing, the obviousness or overtness of His presence. That's big stuff.
It even seems related to the last two exercises in that one was about recognizing the good and then feeling the lack of it, then praying for it, and one about the power of (inaudubible due to mike moving) the lack and asking to get the experience the, feeling the lack of not having your partner… that's the necessary step towards the fulfillment of it. This is different in that it's just feeling the lack. And knowing that
G-d's in that.
That's the higher level.
Yeah. That's the higher level. So, how can we create a setting where people could just experience that?
I want to say, first of all, regarding what I introduced last week, which was about accepting and being whole with the experience of the chisaron as a place from which the awareness of the need will lead to prayer or action, was very significant for me. I did it more than once. Accepting that is so crucial, and to do it open-heartedly and not in bitterness. Crucial. So I hear you, I think that can work, what you're describing. I think like, maybe just calling upon people to do that. Usually people need an interpretation, like a reframing to know that Hashem is in that. You know what I mean? I thought He was gone, but really He was there. And I see how He was there in those moments that were so painful and dramatic and difficult for me. That's usually how that kind of forgiveness is accessed. Wholeness with things is accessed. But here we're talking about before that. This act of withdrawal itself is the act of love. Giving me the opportunity to become an even more unique and different being.
Right, this is the soil in which I am flourishing that G-d has given me. So pratically how to get there. So this is the idea that I have…

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.

Synopsis: A workshop on lack and fulfillment of the need.

Episode Transcript

(Addressing Mary Rose) You’re wondering when a person becomes haughty and takes up all the space, so to speak, there’s no room, no need for another. There’s only me. Or I’m perfect—aren’t any parts in me that need perfection, that need to be spoken to , and raised up, or fixed, etc. that level of haugtiness, you’re wondering, does that erase the malchut, denying the malchut. I want to tell you that you’re on to something.

One of the primary themes in Kabbalah is how separate the malchut is from the rest of the expression of G-d—the malchut ultimately being our consciousness of receiving His goodness and integrating and organizing it into a spoken and expressed reality which is what we live. So consistently through Kabbalah, the question of the consciousness of the Divine which becomes embodied; you see yourself as separate. How much of knowing yourself as separate denies your being at one with G-d? Can you exist one at the same time as an atah who is spoken to, as an atah and can speak to G-d as an atah, and one at the same time know that you are also a very part of Him and living in His life. Well, not even living in His life, but there is nothing other than Him. So that question, the more we split off into consciousness of separateness, without being aware that it is He Who is giving us life, that’s called in Kabbalah kitzut b’nitiot. Cutting off the saplings from their source. The Maharal explains… that the consciousness has to be like a root and a tree and we’re like the tree growing up out of the root. So the upper part of the tree, lives its own life it’s got its leaves, and they’re turning toward the sun, and they’re turning away from the sun, and it’s doing all kinds of things and they’re making food, etc. But as long as it’s made awareness that it’s a tree that is growing out of the root so then it has not become separate and there is not a kitzutz b’netiot. And the Kabbalistic language the malchut has not become a separate consciousness losing its awareness of being one with its root. When we’ve become haughty, so it’s like (slaps hands) cut off, like the trunk and the branches, are like, well I have my own life. And this has tremendous indications about how we relate to our own life. To everything. Including, one of the most sign applications is our ability to forgive. Our ability to let go of resentments, which is one of the most profound blocks that we experience, rests on our ability to see that all always been is G-d, and all this is being energized by the source which is love. So then when I can see what’s happening in my life, and this other person has been sent by G-d as being an expression of G-d and of G-d’s love, then we are able to really forgive. But as long as you live kitzutz b’netiot, with the malchut as like, I’m one separate entity and there’s one separate entity, etc. then the forgiveness becomes “it’s okay, I’m willing to let go,” or whatever. No it’s like mamash, been His love all the time. This the Ramchal teaches. He teaches, like that’s the main thing a person needs to know. The Ramchal says how in the tzimtzum, how it’s drawn is always a circle, and then there’s a line that starts at the top, and goes down to the bottom. He says that the reason it goes down to the bottom, is because it’s the way of G-d that He turns all evil into good. So that everything that’s happened along the way, along that line, in the end feeds right back into the wholeness of G-d’s life, which is to say, that it never really left that. Like, that’s the only thing it could mean. When you look back you could say it was all headed right here. Now, as soon as you separate it, then you’ve lost that…. And the Ramban explains, that’s what it means to build the golden calf,… that’s what it meant to take the fruit from the tree….

(Chaya: Teaching about distance and closeness with others. There’s a Geshtalt exercise it’s very powerful even though it’s very simple. You’re standing in one place, and you have a partner that walks towards you and you experience what it’s like to tell that person to stop, I mean from a distance, the other side of the room. You tell them to come as long as you feel comfortable and then tell them to stop. And all the while you have the consciousness of “What does this bring up for me to tell this person to stop? What does that feel like? Or to tell them to come towards me? What comes up?…” No talking, just you telling stop or go. Basically inviting that person as close or not close as you want to experience. For me it was a powerful experience. I’m thinking about how to do this with your partner, or thinking about a hard issue someone you had an argument with, thinking about an issue, as you’re doing it, and trying it again, thinking differently. Like nice things. And notice in your body, have this person approaching. When you ask someone to come close, you’re making space…When I ask her to come close, I’m giving up space. So just on that theme. )

(Sara Talia: …Looking at ourselves and thinking, are we really ready to be in relationship with others, and therefore to be in relationship with Hashem, so I’ve noticed that occasionally with myself, and experiencing broken trust in the past, and being hurt, and having a hard time knowing when something’s real and being able to have that trust and being able to have that opening in myself for a new relationship. So, I got (inaudible) when you said that, Okay, do I feel despondent and abandoned? Do I feel abandoned by other people? Is that like a bigger picture of an aspect of Hashem that I’m struggling with or an aspect of my reality of my life that I’m blaming Him for, like Hashem, why did you do that, why did You make me go through this pain or this experience, and being able to try to figure out where to go on from there. That’s a hard one.)

(Someone else: Thank you for saying that) (Sara Talia laughing. “Reality check.”)

….

(Chaya: I think it’s been ten minutes…)

It has been ten minutes. I don’t know what they’re planning.

(We’ll see what people want to do… I’ve noticed that doing exercises where everybody goes outside disperses the energy.)

Correct. My suspicion is—

(Writing.Yeah, but I want to tell you about it anyway) Well if people choose it,….

So when you hear them all saying she lo asani ishah, it’s almost like a verbalization of what biologically had to occur when the baby was in embryo, there being a shift, and I should find out more about this, how this works, but maybe a chromosomal shift—maybe you can explain it? You know biology— of declaring shelo asani ishah, and the woman says, sheasani kirtzono. She’s more present to reality as it is, but getting back to your question,and I don’t want to take up all the time talking, although I’m like a non-stop talker once you put people in front of me (laughing)…but the other thing you pointed out, the trial of wait, I’m just an atah to the other man? I always point out to people that the prime position in chazal is that first man was an androgynous, so, so to speak, they were both experiencing that consciousness. So it’s not relevant there being man and woman. And then they got split. There’s no question that you’re an embodiment of feminine, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t also share those other aspects, of that creation of an consciousness by virtue by the longing that you also in your soul root experienced, there was no other, no possibility of it…

(Questions)

Yeah, there is a feminine and masculine principal in the world… but I’m saying these things mix, that because you’re embodied as woman that all you have is the womanly aspect. They mix around. It would be better if we could use a non-sexual language. I don’t know exactly what to do, to be honest, I just talk the truths that I know, and I don’t know exactly what to do to make that feel good, but these are phenomena. I think I told you in the past. I think I was telling you, Baria Schachter was taking Chinese medicine, and they were teaching him about the yin and the yang, and after this long lecture about yin and yang, and feminine and masculine, he looked at his teacher (starting to crack up) in his individual way, and he said, “So tell me, do yin and yang love each other?” (Laughter) It’s like a Jewish, not Chinese question, do yin and yang love each other? Like what’s the energetic root here? And when that happens, yin and yang love each other, then the question of male/female, am I on top, am I on bottom, how is this working, disappears. That’s what we were talking about last year when the complaint about the moon which she introduced, kind of melts away and it becomes a realization of a mutuality of living where being giver, being taker, being recipient, being provider no longer creating hierarchy, because the experience is of one organism. So the experience of one organism, that becomes an inappropriate nomenclature. An inappropriate use of naming. (inaudible) more or less, there’s one thing here. Yeah, there are two kings and one crown. Yeah, there really can be such a thing. If we had the consciousness of crown. Consciousness of crown is when everything has ended, now because a new beginning. Just to bring it back to the beginning of the shiur. Like when the end point because the beginning, that’s when crown comes in. We’ll have a brief biological explanation.

(In the embryology, the fetus begins, if you look at the reproductive organs, begins as a urogenital sinus, which is like androgynous. And then it develops into female, into male. But the potential for each is already in the DNA. Potential for both. Yes. Because when the sperm fertilizes, the sperm has the XX or the XY, and the female, the egg, has the XX, so when it combines, either you have the XX or XY because it’s the Y that comes from the male. So the potential is there, but in the development, it looks androgynous in the beginning, and then it develops into female, and into the male. )

Wow, so that picture of how man is created, is mamash how it happens to every one of us, where we’re both, and then become one, choosing our way. Wow.

I did hear, though, that the primary base is a female one, you’re saying not so. (No, the potential is already there from the beginning. So it develops because of the DNA which is like the basic [inaudible] (that give the potential) (Chaya: But what about the fact that the ege is XX always, and the sperm is either XY or XX, so the sperm itself has this variability to it.)  Right, but the egg, is the base line, so then the sperm has to come in so to speak, and say, she lo asani ishah, or she asani kirtzono , I’ll just leave things as they are. Or, shelo asani ishah, I gotta make a stand and become male. Everyone laughing) We’ll put that into the siddur commentary (more laughing) with pictures!

(Chaya presenting choices, the issue of lack in our lives, meditation and writing. Or going outside more embodied, and experience the teachings as an embodied experience and taking up space.)

(Chaya: So there are so many thing in Rav Daniel’s shiurim, what do you jump on the flesh out, and then what do you take home that impacts the rest of your day. So last week, and there are themes of it in this week, really impacted my day on a day-to-day basis. It was on the theme of lack, and the parallel of the two stories. First, the story of Adam, and how he was seeing the animals, but he decided, “I want my couple…” –kaful in Hebrew is double—so he sees the animals couple and he feels the lack of “Wow, I don’t have that” and so he sees a necessary ingredient for then G-d being able to fulfill the lack. And that story paralleled the story about the rain, and about how man noticed the good of rain, and felt the lack of rain, and then how G-d gave the rain—that was G-d’s plan from the get-go, to implant the lack in order that man should feel it and pray and bring it down. And that somehow, this is one of the equations of existence where G-d sets up a situation where we feel lack, in order that G-d can feel it.[1] and you know the boray nefashot prayer, that we say after we eat. Thank you G-d, You created all of these creatures with all of our lacks, and that You can fulfill them. That’s what we say after we eat, because eating itself is, or hunger itself, is such an experience of lack, that we need to fulfill it. It’s such a clear, visceral, embodied sense of lack that we get to experience several times a day. So that becomes a template for that prayer and that idea, it’s clearly expressed there. And we can express that in all areas of our lives where we feel lack. And for me, it’s very powerful, because I love feeling guilty. So if I feel lack, then I immediately feel guilty about the fact that I’m feeling lack because I’m so blessed, and everything is G-d, and how dare I feel lack, so I get all down on myself whenever I feel lack, chutzpah, so for me, I have issues with lack. On the one hand I feel it in a big way: I have jealousies, and I have desires, and on the other hand I feel really bad about the fact that I feel jealous, or about the fact that I feel like G-d’s not giving me something. So it’s this kind of quandary about how to experience lack, and so the beautiful things about these Torah for me was able to put it in a frame of “G-d put you in this quandary, G-d gave you this experience of feeling lack for a reason.” So you can feel it, and pray to G-d, and G-d can fulfill it, and you can have awareness G-d as the Other who fulfills your needs and G-d can awareness being that Source of chesed. And that’s just part of that relationship. So it was very comforting to put it in the framework of the holy, this thing that brings up such negative feelings in my life. So I feel like we could take a moment and focus on some place where you’re feeling you’re lacking, you’re not getting something you need, you’re not getting what you want, and we’re doing a little meditation on it, and then a little writing.)

So the first step is to conjure up an aspect of our lives where we feel lack. And get that in our minds. Whether it’s a picture thing, or mulling about it…?

(Yeah, we’ll do this as like a guided meditation. Yeah, in terms of evoking an experience of where you felt this lack…. )

To look at something I really want to be having, and to look at it in my mind as having been realized and feeling how much I want it? Or let’s say, I’d like to be impacting shul communities. So would I imagine myself impacting a shul community, and davening differently, etc. and then feel the lack that’s missing? Or would I look at myself walking into an empty shul, and having nobody there to listen?

(That’s juicier.)

It’s a lot harder.

(Getting into the pain? Yeah, feeling the pain. And then take moments to pray about it. What good is it to pray without the pain?)

I hear you. So we’re not starting with makir b’tov, and then going into the lack. We’re just emphasizing what we’re missing. That’s okay. (We’re appreciating the lack. Some days you need makir b’tov and some days you need to feel the lack.)

Guided meditation: Feet on the floor….And as you’re breathing in, just invite in awareness about your feeling of great lack now. What is hurting? What are you aching about? It might help to envision the actual incident where you felt this lack. Feel into your emotions about why is it so painful to me why I don’t have this. Feel the tragedy of this lack in your life. And the pathos. And once you’ve really feel you have this in hand, the pain of this, the lack of this, then open up your hands and pray to G-d that G-d should fulfill this need. And remind G-d that G-d is the One who created the lack that it should be filled. And when you feel like you’ve prayed your prayer—take as much time as you need to do this—then imagine G-d fulfilling your need. And when you’re ready, you can write what it looks like in detail, what it looks like, this fulfillment, describing to a “t”, what G-d does to fulfill this need.

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