Pieces

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Random thoughts related from Jewish meanderings.

  1. Ecclesiastes 5:1
  2. Ashrei - אשרי
  3. Temple
  4. Humble
  5. Joy
  6. Ability to Receive (from 1)
  7. 1, 2, 3
  8. Stand Over/Stand Under
  9. Walk casually with me
  10. Chok - Statute/Decree
  11. Galut (Exile)
  12. Yehudi
  13. Sixty Days of Joy
  14. The Concealment of the Glory
  15. Circumcised mouth
  16. The Splendours (qkab)
  17. Flood
  18. Noah
  19. Sitre Torah - Abulafia
  20. Shabbat - Chapter Two
  21. Sleep
  22. Act of Creation
  23. Miracles

Joy

"The Divine Presence abides only in joy" (Shabbat 30b)
ואין השׁכינה שׁורה אלא מתוך שׂמחה

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: the Temple should then be called, “The Temple of Meeting”, just as the Tent was referred to in the Desert.

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 the Truth (or Light of the Truth, or the True Light). To acknowledge myself as humble (לְהִתַחת).

Ability to Receive (from 1)

In the Torah, Hashem is not even the second word. In fact, it is the third and the sentence is rendered sometimes 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 in order to receive.

Numbers - 0-9

  • One is G-d, and G-d is One.
  • Two is creation, a This and a That.
  • Three is Life, re-creation.
  • Four is completion and form.
  • Five is foundation, from which comes movement.
  • Six is consciousness, and the need for balance.
  • Seven is seeding, and fruiting.
  • Eight is recurring, and recycling.
  • Nine is completion, and death.
  • Zero is the singularity, the source of everything.

Walk casually with me

If you do not hearken to Me, and walk casually with Me; I, too, will act casually with you… (_Lev_. 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 Masters

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 for meal placements with 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 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)

And you I shall scatter amongst the nations (Leviticus 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.

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.

NWhile in exile, your conscience lies dormant, your soul unable to express and actualise its G-dly awareness and feelings. The cure to this state is your submission to the role you must play in the Divine plan — a role that transcends emotion and intellect. It is this simple loyalty to G-d that restores your essential relationship with Him.

Yehudi

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

"The Glory of G-d is to conceal a matter" (Prov. 25:2)
כבוד אלוהים הסתר דבר

Circumcised mouth

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)
אַל־תִּתֵּ֤ן אֶת־פִּ֙יךָ֙ לַחֲטִ֣יא אֶת־בְּשָׂרֶ֔ךָ

Science is necessary to prevent the transmission of secrets that portend the inherently inscrutable 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 (qkab)

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 our intellect cannot actually comprehend them. That is why the person who is able and worthy of striving in these thoughts to grasp these things 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

Shabbat - Chapter Two

1: 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, 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, we are permitted to derive benefit from what was completed on the Sabbath.
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:

Sleep

"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.

Act of Creation

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
## Miracles

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.