- Ashrei - אשרי
- Temple
- Humble
- Joy
- Ability to Receive (from 1)
- 1, 2, 3...
- Stand Over/Stand Under
- Exile
- Walk casually with me...
- Chok - Statute/Decree
- Galut (Exile)
- Sixty Days of Joy
- The Concealment of the Glory
- The Splendours
- Flood
- Noah
- Sitre Torah - Abulafia
- Shabbat - Chapter Two
- Sleep (Judaica/quotes)
- Judaica
- Quotes
שׁמִר רגליך כאשׁר תלך אל־בית האלוהים, וקרוב לשׁמיע מִתֶת
"Be not overeager to go to the house of G-d.
"Keep (guard) שׂמור רגליך your foot when walking (going) to the temple"
Ashrei - אשרי
Happy is the person who does not follow the advice of the evil doers or stands in the path of sinners. Nor sits in the place of צום, scornful wrong-doers. If he seeks, even delights in, the way the Torah, and conducts himself day and night according to its precepts, he is like the flowering tree planted on the banks of water whose fruit comes forth and provides in its season and leaves remain. All that he does will be successful.
Temple
Temple: House of G-d; place of meeting with G-d -> visionary world of the Divine; angelic space.
Place of meeting between G-d & man: In a sense, the temple should then be called, "The Temple of Meeting", just as the Tent was referred to in the Desert. {Or does this become part of the "Only Moses can meet directly with G-d?" line?
Humble
Underneath does not necessarily mean lower. To acknowledge that you are below (be low = humble). Which means that you acknowledge that you are below (or under-neath) some One. This is the foundation of "under standing". Thus you have the "lower realm", which is not really "lower", but rather "further". 'Further from what', you may ask? Further from the Truth (or Light of the Truth, or the True Light). To acknowledge myself as humble (לְהִתַחת)
Joy
ואין השׁכינה שׁורה אלא מתוך שׂמחה"The Divine Presence (Shekhina) abides only in joy" (Shabbat 30b)
Ability to Receive (from 1)
In Hebrew, Hashem is not even the second word. In fact, it is the third and the sentence is rendered sometime like: "It will be seen/appeared to..." I emphasise this, because the first step is one of looking, then seeing. In order for it to appear, one must have looked at it, and the in order to "see" it, something (hopefully what you were looking for) must have been "found"... and that requires a stillness, and ability to receive.
1, 2, 3...
- One: is G-d
- Two: is Creation
- Three: is Life
- Four: Completion & Beginning
- Five: Foundation
- Six: Consciousness
- Seven: Fruiting
- Eight: Recurring, continuing
- Nine: Death
- One & Zero: Next Level
Stand Over/Stand Under
יותר מִשֶׁהאישׁ רוצה לִשֹׂא, אישׁה רוצה להנשׂא
- Note that here the word ניצב ־ ניצבים is used for standing over him. Whereas in verse 8, the more common word אומד is used when Abraham, the man, "stands over" the angels.
- Why are angels traditionally represented as male?
Exile
And you I shall scatter amongst the nations (26:33)
G-d did a kindness to the people of Israel, that he scattered them amongst the nations. For if they were concentrated in one place, the heathens would make war on them; but since they are dispersed, they cannot be destroyed.
-- (Talmud Pesachim 87b; Midrash Lekach Tov)
The people of Israel were exiled among the nations only in order that converts should be added to them. (Talmud, ibid.)
Walk casually with me...
If you will not hearken to Me, and walk casually with Me; I, too, will act casually with you... (26:28)
All sins derive from the sin of insignificance: when a person ceases to be sensitive to the paramount importance which G-d attaches to his life and deeds. "I don't really matter" is not humility—it is the ultimate arrogance. It really means: "I can do what I want". The most terrible of punishments is for G-
d to indulge the sinner this vanity. For G-d to say: "All right, have it your way; what happens to you is of no significance"; for G-d to act toward him as if He really does not care what happens to him. (The Chassidic Master)
This point is illustrated by a story told by the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn:
"A wealthy businessman and his coachman arrived in a city one Friday afternoon. After the rich man was settled at the best hotel in town, the coachman went off to his humble lodgings. Both washed and dressed for Shabbat and then set out for the synagogue for the evening prayers. On his way to shul, the businessman came across a wagon which had swerved off the road and was stuck in the ditch. Rushing to help a fellow in need, he climbed down into the ditch and began pushing and pulling at the wagon together with its hapless driver. But for all his good intentions, the businessman was hopelessly out of his depth. After struggling for an hour in the knee-deep mud, he succeeded only in ruining his best suit of Shabbat clothes and getting the wagon even more hopelessly embedded in the mud. Finally, he dragged his bruised and aching body to the synagogue, arriving a scant minute before the start of Shabbat."Meanwhile, the coachman arrived early to the synagogue and sat down to recite a few chapters of Psalms. At the synagogue he found a group of wandering paupers, and being blessed with a most generous nature, invited them all to share his meal. When the synagogue sexton approached the paupers to arrange meal placements the town's householders, as is customary in Jewish communities, he received the same reply from them.
"Thank you, but I have already been invited for the Shabbat meal."
"Unfortunately, however, the coachman's means were unequal to his generous heart, and his dozen guests left his table with but a shadow of a meal in their hungry stomachs.
"Thus the coachman, with his twenty years of experience in extracting wagons from mudholes, took it upon himself to feed a small army, while the wealthy businessman, whose Shabbat meal leftovers could easily have fed every hungry man within a ten mile radius, floundered about in a ditch.
"Every soul," said Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak in conclusion, "is entrusted with a mission unique to her alone, and is granted the specific aptitudes, talents and resources necessary to excel in her ordained role. One most take care not to become one of those 'lost souls' who wander through life trying their hand at every field of endeavour except for what is truly and inherently their own."
"Every person was born to a mission in life that is distinctly, uniquely and exclusively their own. No one—not even the greatest of souls—can take his or her place. No person who ever lived or who ever will live can fulfil that particular aspect of G-d's purpose in creation in his stead.
—The Lubavitcher Rebbe
Chok - Statute/Decree
If you walk in My statutes (Leviticus 26:3)
The word chok ("statute" or "decree"), which gives the Parshah of Bechukotai its name, literally means "engraved". The Torah comes in two forms: written and engraved. On the last day of his life, Moses inscribed the Torah on parchment scrolls. But this written Torah was preceded by an engraved Torah: the Divine law was first given to us encapsulated in the Ten Commandments, which were etched by the hand of G-d in two tablets of stone. When something is written, the substance of the letters that express it—the ink—remains a separate entity from the substance upon which they have been set—the parchment. On the other hand, letters engraved in stone are forged in it: the words are stone and the stone is words. By the same token, there is an aspect of Torah that is "inked" on our soul: we understand it, our emotions are roused by it; it becomes our "lifestyle" or even our "personality"; but it remains something additional to ourselves. But there is a dimension of Torah that is chok, engraved in our being. There is a dimension of Torah which expresses a bond with G-d that is of the very essence of the Jewish soul. (Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi)
A rabbi once offered the following analogy:
"Every Jew is a letter in the Torah. But a letter may, at times, grow somewhat faded. It is our sacred duty to mend these faded letters and make G-d's Torah whole again."
Galut (Exile)
In galut ("exile") the Jewish conscience lies dormant, the soul unable to express and actualize its G‑dly awareness and feelings. The cure to this state of spiritual coma is the Jew's submission to the role he must play in the Divine plan—a role that transcends emotion and intellect. It is this simple loyalty to G‑d that restores the Jew's essential relationship with Him.
Though Mordechai was a Benjaminite, he is called Yehudi ("Jew") which literally means a descendant of the tribe of Yehudah (Judah). Likewise, throughout the Megillah, the entire Jewish people are called Yehudim, without distinction of tribal origin. For Yehudi is of the same root as hoda'ah which means "to acknowledge" and "to accept". This title describes the core of the Jew, his untouchable essence.
“Everything that a person sees or hears should serve him as a lesson in his service of G‑d”
– – — Rabbi Baal Shem Tov
Sixty Days of Joy
It is with the service of G-d just as it is with a victory over a physical opponent; for instance, two people who wrestle with each other, each striving to fell the other. If one of them is lazy and sluggish, he will easily be defeated and will fall, even if he is stronger than the other. Similarly, with the conquest of one’s evil nature, it is impossible to conquer the evil nature with laziness and sluggishness—which stem from sadness and a stone-like dullness of the heart—but rather [it must be conquered] with alacrity, which derives from joy and an open heart that is unblemished by any trace of worry and sadness in the world.
— Tanya, chapter 26
The Concealment of the Glory
כבוד אלוהים הסתר דבר"The Glory of G-d is to conceal a matter"
(Prov. 25:2)
This proverb impels the initiate not to discourse about or meditate on the sefirot excessively.
"Do not allow your mouth to cause your flesh to sin"_(Eccl. 5:4)
Science is necessary to prevent the transmission of secrets that portend the inherently inscurable dimension of Divine Reality, even if permission has been granted to contemplate them. Indeed the contemplation thereof leads one to the discernment that these matters are beyond comprehension."
Zoharic Kabbalah: The reserve to hide secrets is juxtaposed with the modesty of covering one's genitals. The inappropriate disclosure of esoteric wisdom is on par with sexual improprieties.
R' Isaac applied the sin of the mouth to flesh to the transgression of explicating matters of Torah that one did not receive directly from his Master, transmission that is like to the prohibition against making idols or worshipping images.
The Splendours
Somewhere beyond the heavens, hidden in the mists of the cosmos, are Lights, which we call the "Splendours". These Splendours are even more powerful than the sefiroth, which are the Emanations of which we have spoken, some of which are the most we can perceive, though they are always influencing and guiding our lives. Yet it is these Splendours which truly satisfy the soul, even though they are unreachable and unknowable, and the our intellect cannot actually comprehend them. That is why the person who is able and worthy of striving in this thoughts to grasp these thing is joyful. [And know that Joy is always a characteristic of one whose soul swims in these nourishing waters]
-- Likutey Moharan 23:1,8
Flood
The waters of the flood that "unsouled" everyone did not destroy the earth, nor its vegetation. For the olive trees bore olives soon after the floods receded, as the dove that Noah sent forth returned with an olive.
Noah
Noah sent the dove from himself, and received it into himself with the olive branch. An ancient tree, with full round fruit, signifying the circle of life.
Sitre Torah - Abulafia
The strongest of these holy combinations from which you will know the secret of the Ineffable Name ... are the letters which are called Urim and Tummim, which illuminate the eyes of the hearts, and complete the thoughts. and enlighten the path of understanding, and make know the planetary positions, and teach the existence of separate beings and tell the future
{NOTE: What if that is true! Or I accept it as true? That would cause an existential breakdown.}
Shabbat - Chapter Two
.א מֻתָּר לְהַתְחִיל מְלָאכָה מֵעֶרֶב שַׁבָּת אַף עַל פִּי שֶׁהִיא נִגְמֶרֶת מֵאֵלֶיהָ בְּשַׁבָּת. שֶׁלֹּא נֶאֱסַר עָלֵינוּ לַעֲשׂוֹת מְלָאכָה אֶלָּא בְּעַצְמוֹ שֶׁל יוֹם. אֲבָל כְּשֶׁתֵּעָשֶׂה הַמְּלָאכָה מֵעַצְמָהּ בְּשַׁבָּת מֻתָּר לָנוּ לֵהָנוֹת בְּמַה שֶּׁנַּעֲשָׂה בְּשַׁבָּת מֵאֵלָיו:
- It is permissible to begin the performance of a [forbidden] labour on Friday, even though the labour is completed on its own accord on the Sabbath itself,[^1] for the prohibition against work applies only on the Sabbath itself. Moreover, when a task is carried out on its own accord on the Sabbath,[^2] we are permitted to derive benefit from what was completed on the Sabbath.
It is difficult to apply these
Sleep (Judaica/quotes)
"When a person climbs into bed, his soul leaves him..." (Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, 1:121b, note 8, p203)
"This soul fills the body, and when a person sleeps she ascends, drawing down life from above" - R' Me'ir (Tishby, Wisdom of the Zohar, 2:809-12)
To be religious means to have an intuitive feeling of the unity of everything (that is HaShem). G-d is the name we give to this unity. And so we gather around the call of the Shma, just as the people were called by the shofar in times of old.
The extent to which you wish to give to the Creator, will be the extent to which you gain satisfaction with what you do.
Judaica
1/10/2002 10:54 AM
Parshas Va'era
Yechezkel 28:25
This week's haftorah teaches us a profound lesson in arrogance and self
dependency. HaShem instructed the prophet Yechezkel to deliver a crushing blow to Pharaoh and his Egyptian empire and predict its total destruction.
HaShem said, "Behold I am sending the sword after you that will decimate
man and animal. Egypt will lay desolate and ruined....in response to your
saying, 'The river is mine and I developed it.'" (29:8,9) HaShem held
Pharaoh and Egypt fully accountable for their arrogant approach to
prosperity crediting their sustenance solely to their technology.
Never to forget our limited role in our personal success. We must never forget that HaShem is our true provider and He develops and secures our efforts with their ultimate success.
Quotes
Act of Creation (judaica)
If the world results in an act of creation, G-d, as the Creator, can introduce changes at will. Our Rabbis limit the scope of such change.
— R' Saadia Ha'Gaon
{NOTE: I believe that this is an incorrect understanding of the Will of G-d. It is perfect, and thus is constant. There is not "wilfull change", it is all an expression of His Will, even though we judge it to be wilful.}
*** Miracles (judaica)
Once G-d miraculously transforms the nature of simple elements in joining them to composite bodies, the only subsequent changes are the miracles performed to validate the prophetic mission.