Insights into Rabbi Ashlag's Kabbalah podcast

Although Pesach is now behind us, we mention the miracle of the exodus from Egypt every single day in our prayers. Each year, a different aspect leaps out at me; this year, it was the Crossing of the Red Sea. If we look at the ten plagues God inflicted on the Egyptians, they occur within the bounds of nature: Nature taken to extremes. But the Red Sea’s parting lies in entirely another dimension: beyond the domains of nature. A sea divides. The seabed becomes dry land, solid enough for 600,000 people to walk on. The ordinary borders between sea and land change for precisely the time it takes for the Children of Israel to pass through. One imagines the miracle of the Crossing of the Red Sea to be a one-time event. But in fact, it isn’t. When Joshua led the Children of Israel into the Promised Land, the waters of the River Jordan parted, and they crossed on dry land. The Talmud records an instance when Rabbi Pinchas Ben Yair, was on his way ot recscue hostages the River Ganni parted for him. We have just celebrated Yom Haatzmaut Independence day when we celebrate the miracle of the State of Israel, for miracle it surely is.  According to all the laws of nature—the sociological laws the anthropological laws and the laws of demographics and statistics—our existence as the Jewish people isn’t explainable. Yet here we are! What is the basis of this phenomenon, and do these events have meaning for us today? To answer these questions, we must first consider what nature is, and discover what causes an event beyond nature’s ordinary boundaries. What we call “nature” is the way the world usually works. The holy Ari teaches that the world has only two basic elements: the Creator and the created. These express themselves as the goodness of God and the desire to receive this goodness. The desire to receive the Creator’s goodness is the created element and forms the primary material of all creation: All elements of reality, inanimate, plant, animal, and human, have the desire to receive goodness. In the human this desire to receive God’s goodness manifests through all aspects of ourselves, our physical being, our emotions and our desires to know and control our lives.  Our soul however is part of the essence of God. Unlike the created aspects of ourselves, our soul desires not to receive, but to give unconditionally, just like the Creator; its Root, only gives. When we give altruistically to others, we act according to our soul’s desire. Likewise, when we place our faith and trust in the goodness of the Creator, instead of relying on external sources, we act according to our soul’s desire. When we accord with our souls’ wishes, we are no longer confined to the material of the natural world; we have gone beyond the boundaries of created nature. At this point, the Sages teach us that a law higher than the laws of nature can now come into play. In the last six months, we in Israel have merited witnessing the most incredible examples of deeds of ultimate selflessness, deeds that are truly beyond the boundaries of nature. So many men and women, young and not so young, selflessly gave their lives to save helpless victims on October 7 and in its aftermath. Throughout all these months of difficulty, people from all levels of society have been volunteering: helping the wives of reservists, helping the farmers harvest the land, and helping each other stay calm, cheerful, and confident. These actions of selflessness that are above and beyond the boundaries of nature are not actions you will find portrayed in the media, but they are numerous and do change reality. Witness what happened on the night of April 13: Iran sent an incredible number of lethal ballistic missiles to murder as many Jews as possible, indiscriminately. Yet we merited to a miracle above nature!—a modern Crossing of the Red Sea! Any scientist will tell you that no human system is as good as what happened that night. No human system is 99.9% successful. Yet that is what happened! Today, as we watch with growing dismay and disbelief the stream of antisemitism in the streets and universities of cities all over the world, let us take heart from the realization that miracles like the Crossing of the Red Sea are not one-time miracles. They can and do happen in our time too. How can we create the conditions that can bring such miracles about? Acting against our created nature isn’t easy. Very often, we want to, but we need to know how. However, we are blessed that the Torah of the soul, the Kabbalah, is now available to us through the the great Kabbalist of the 20th century, Rabbi Ashlag. When we learn the Kabbalah, we can get to know what our individual soul wants and how it needs to express itself. Then, we can all contribute to the energy field in which the miraculous can happen. Thus, the words of the prophet Micah, “Just as in the days of your coming out of Egypt, I will show you miracles” (Micah 7:27) will come true. I bless you and all whom you love so that we may merit witnessing miracles in our lives for which we can all give thanks.

The Torah is not a history book. The outer events of our forefathers’ lives are recorded in the Torah, but the meaning of these events and the intentions of the protagonists are recorded in the inner aspect of the Torah, the Zohar. It’s when we put the inner intentions together with the events, we can begin to understand why these stories are important for us today in living our own lives. In this shiur  we look at one example in which Yaakov teaches us how to handle our own selfishness and egoism. We discover that before we plan to do a mitzvah, our own yetzer hara comes to us as an inner voice telling us that since our work is not perfect it’s not worth doing. This is the voice of Laban, who claimed all Yaakov’s work for his own. “The daughters are my daughters, and the sons are my sons, and the animals are my animals, and all that you see is mine.”( Gen.33:43)   What does Yaakov teach us to say to this inner voice?He says “I dwelt with Laban yet I kept the Torah and mitzvot.” We need to ignore it. We need to raise ourselves up with pride in the fact that we are the children of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, and have faith that God takes pleasure in our work, in whatever form it takes. But then “Yaakov sent messengers to Esau.” This action of Yaakov takes us by surprise. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? But here again Yaakov is teaching us an important lesson. After we have done the mitzvah we need to go to the opposite extreme, and consider how much our wills to receive for ourselves alone are really the basis of our work. What is Esau’s response? He sas, I have plenty my brother, Keep what is yours!” In other words, here our inner voice of the yetzer hara is saying exactly the opposite! it says,”you are so righteous, you have nothing more to do!” It wants to convince us that our work is perfect, so that we rest on our laurels and don’t prgress another inch! What does Jacob do? He entreats Esau to accept his gift and humbles himself before him. In the same way, we also need to realize how much our wills to receive for ourselves alone are involved in our service to God. We need to ignore the inner voice of Esau , and separate from it going our own way into the Land of Yisrael, the consciousness that is in affinity of form with God until we merit to come to Beit El, the house of God. This podcast is dedicated lilui nishmat my dear mother, Chaya bat Menachem haLevi Material taken from Birkat Shalom ” Al HaTorah, Parhsat Vayishlach, and the Zohar with Perush haSulam Parahst Vayishlach, beginnning Picture by Menachem Halberstam

We all experience our thoughts as being our own. They feel like ours. We don’t usually consider where our thoughts arise from, and we either dismiss our thoughts or act on them automatically, without particularly questioning whether this is what we really want to do. But Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag, the great master Kabbalist, teaches that our thoughts do not originate from us, they come to us from God. All the thoughts that come into our minds are the work of the Creator. But this does not accord with the way we feel things. We think that we attract our thoughts from someplace, or that our thoughts arise within us.  Our thoughts feel like our thoughts. But this is a complete falsehood, the greatest of all lies. That we think that we own our thoughts is the greatest lie of all. The truth is, that it is God who sends even the most subtle of thoughts into our minds, and is through this means that He motivates us, moving us to act through the thoughts He sends us. It is through this means that He motivates us and moves us Just as the earth cannot feel who is sending it the rain that causes the seeds to sprout, so we cannot feel who is sending our thoughts to us that create within us motivation or needs. This is because until a thought has entered our minds, we cannot actually think it. And once it is in the domain of our minds, it feels like it is ours. God sends us thoughts one after the other, in a tailor- made sequence, in order to move each one of us further along the path that will bring us into affinity of form with Him and thus enable us to receive all the good and delight that God purposes for each and every one of us. So God sends to us a series of thoughts and feelings, both good and bad. Thoughts and feelings, which are organized according to the  Divine providence, tailored uniquely and intimately for every one of us to bring us to the fulfilment of our soul’s purpose. No one shall be left out, as it is written in Samuel II 14:14 “even the banished one shall not be cast out.”  Pri Chacham Sichot. From what Rabbi Ashlag writes, we can see that we have here an amazing channel of communication and of contact with our Creator. It’s a channel of communication which is intimate and true, inspiring us to turn toward God, a channel that is always available to us. It is ready for each one of us to use, so long as we acknowledge it and consciously use it. Indeed we need to give thanks for every thought we receive, and feel great joy that God Himself is communicating with us, demonstrating His care for each of us as a unique individual who is precious in His eyes.

I live in tsfat but today I am traveling to Jerusalem. I am  looking forward to seeing my sisters ,  my daughter-in law and my little grandchildren, who all live there. I hope to travel on the buses and enjoy the new light rail. Today Jerusalem is a city filled with life just as the prophet Zecharia prophesied 2000 years ago. Thus says the LORD of hosts: There shall yet old men and old women sit in the streets of Jerusalem, every man with his walking stick in his hand for very age. And the streets of the city will be full of boys and girls playing Zecharia 8:4-5 Yet, this coming  Sunday, the fast of Tisha b’av falls and I, with other orthodox and religious Jews will be sitting on the floor, mourning the destruction of the Temple —an event which took place on this day 2000 years ago, One cannot help asking,  Doesn’t this seem like an anachronism? It seems as if I, together with other religious Jews are stuck in a time warp and we are still behaving as we did for centuries, mourning the destruction of Jerusalem. We seem to be acting as if we haven’t noticed the miraculous return of the Jews to Zion and the incredible rebuilding of Jerusalem. Indeed could our behavior be considered as ingratitude?  If we consider only the physical, the external, then we can still say that the redemption isn’t complete because Jews still have difficulty ascending onto Temple Mount and praying there, and the Temple is still not rebuilt. On the other hand , if we apply the principle of Dayeinu, being thankful for every step to redemption, then our Tisha bAv mourning does seem hard to justify. However, when we look at this period of the year through the lens of the inner teachings of the Torah and the inner work we need to do on Tisha BaAv, the picture looks very different.   The Zohar teaches us that the meaning of Jerusalem is the innermost aspect of our heart. It is the soul within us. Jerusalem is the point of holiness, the Divine presence that dwells within each and every one of us. Therefore, on Tisha b Av we mourn for the fact that the Divine aspect of ourselves is still hidden from ourselves. Our Divinity and the Divine potential within our fellow beings is hidden. Furthermore, when we look at our relationship with the Divine spark within us, we see that in the minute details of our thoughts, our words, and our actions, we don’t often place our relationship with God as the highest aspect of our priorities, as it should be.    By looking at the present through the prism of the past, we may gain an understanding of the tikkun we need to do in the present in order to rectify and correct the way we relate to our inner Jerusalem. On this day, as we know, tragedies took place throughout history to the Jewish people, the main ones that we relate to being the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and the subsequent bitter exile and dispersion of the Jewish people from this land. But there was one that was prior to that and indeed is the root of them all. This was the rejection of the Land of Israel by the spies.  The Zohar relates the land of Israel as the consiousness of being in dvekut with God, in Oneness with the Creator. Just as He is compassionate so must we be compassionate. But that also means refusing to listen to the demands of our egoistic selfish personalities, which manifest as our will to receive for ourselves alone, and which is called the yetzer hara. On Tisha B’Av, the Children of Israel rejected the physical land of Israel. Today, are we committing the sin of rejecting the consiousness of the land of Israel? If we look at the state of ourselves and the state of the world we cannot say that the Divine consciousness is at the top of our agenda. On the contrary, our inner Jerusalem is still in exile, weeping and mourning, for we are not paying attention to Her. By each of us spending this Tisha B’Av in contemplating our inner reality and mourning the loss of godliness in our lives, we can start to take responsiblity, and thus create a vessel for the light of Divine consciousness, so it may permeate our lives and the lives of all who share our existence with us. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory of my dear mother, Chaya bat Menachem Mendel a”h

and what is the Torah? The Zohar teaches us that  the essence of the Torah, the essence of God, and the essence of the soul are one. But we cannot attain the essence of God directly —even the essence of ourselves, our soul, is hidden from us. So the one aspect of this godly essence that we are given as a gift to grasp and to attain, is the Torah. When we learn, immerse ourselves, in the Torah, we are connecting directly with the Holy blessed One and with our own soul. And this is the great  gift that we are given every Shavuot, to renew our connection with the Divine essence. But we’re not just a soul, we are also made up of the body. These two components, while they need each other, also oppose each other. Our body aspect, our egoism, tells us, “Whatever you do to better yourself in the material sense, or whatever actions you take that increase your importance in the world are good.” Whereas the soul, says, “Whatever we can do in giving unconditionally, whether to God or to our fellow human being, is good, because such actions bring us close to God.” Our body aspect is more familiar to us:  it starts to grow the moment we are born, whereas our soul incarnates later. The voice of the ego is strident, fitting in with the messages we get from the society around us and from the media, whereas the soul whispers and we have to strain to hear its voice. So how are we going to want to contact the soul? How are we going to decide that the yetzer hara, our evil inclination, is really our worst enemy ? How are we going to want the Torah, our connection with our soul?  In this podcast, we study a beautiful article of Rabbi Baruch Shalom Ashlag in which he shows us that it is God, who, when He comes down into the mind and heart of a person, as He came down on Mount Sinai, shows us the reality of our own egoism, so we will want to receive the Torah again, here and now, with all our heart. Podcast luilui nishmat Shalom Lev ben David haLevi Segal z”l Based on article of Rabbi Baruch Shalom Halevi Ashlag, Sefer Hama’marim Volume 2 תשמז article 18

When we first look at the Haggadah, it seems to be a collection of somewhat disconnected paragraphs, with the overall motif being the story of the Children of Israel coming out of Egypt. However, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai teaches in the Zohar that the Torah is not a history book. Rather, it is a book of instruction that deals with our present day relationship with the Divine. Just as a person wears clothes, so does the Torah itself wear a garment. The garments of the Torah are the stories we find within it. But just as nobody is silly enough to mistake the garment for the person, so we need to look beneath the surface of these stories to find the real essence of the Torah. To take the stories at face value and think that they are all the Torah is, is just as silly as relating to a person only from the outer clothes that he or she wears. So when we sit down on Seder night to read the Haggadah, our purpose is not to tell a story of what happened 3000 years ago, but to examine in what way we are in exile now from ourselves and from our Creator, and to discover what redemption from that exile comprises. Packed within the words of the Haggadah is both the soul’s experience of exile, and our joy in redemption, in the reconnection that God uniquely grants us on Seder night, the holy night of freedom. Only when we recognize our own exile we can value the freedom that God gives us the opportunity to gain. These motifs are very well portrayed in the section of the Haggadah on the four sons. It is a section that seems baffling, even silly when regarded in an external manner, but when we explore it using our knowledge of the language of the Zohar and the insights we gain from Kabbalah as taught by the great Kabbalist Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag we discover that this is a section that clearly defines what constitutes redemption and what constitutes exile, and also examines our sometimes unexpected responses to the light of redemption.

The archetype of exile is the Children of Israel’s servitude in Egypt. The Sages teach us that this exile was in fact a spiritual exile, even more than it was a physical exile. Indeed if the spiritual enslavement hadn’t happened the physical servitude would have been impossible. Rabbi Ashlag, in a letter to his students, explains how the slavery of the Children of Israel by the Egyptians came about. He starts off with an interesting statement from the Talmud on the rules concerning the cities of refuge. A Torah student who has committed manslaughter must be exiled to a city of refuge: and in that case his Rabbi is exiled with him. The Sages ask: How could such a terrible thing happen to a student of Torah learning with a true Rabbi? Why didn’t his Torah learning protect him from such an event? Rabbi Ashlag points out that this mischance happened to the student because he was in some sense already in exile from his teacher. His estimation of his teacher had gone down so that he no longer valued his teacher and was therefore unable to receive faith and true service of God from him. By looking carefully at the verses from the Scripture describing the beginning of the exile of the Children of Israel we find a similar process: Joseph the Tzaddik and his generation died, and a new King arose who didn’t recognize Joseph. Rabbi Ashlag points out that it wasn’t the physical presence of Joseph that was missing , it was the way the Children of Israel valued him in their heart. They were not valuing the Tzaddik in their heart , and thus allowed a new governance, —the new King — to conduct their thought speech and actions, instead of the faith that the Tzaddik had taught them. Thus they became under the dominance of the Kilpah, the evil light of Egypt. The same principles operate within us. Each one of us has a holy Neshamah, the soul. It is part of the essence of God within us. If we value our soul as we should, placing our faith in it, in the God within, realizing it has so much to teach us and doing all we can to enhance its actions, through our practice of Torah and mitzvot, we can move out of our inner exile and reclaim our redemption. Material for this podcast taken from Igeret HaSulam Letter 12

When we read about brothers in the Torah, we find that the concept of brotherhood as we understand it today, took much time and difficulty to emerge. The first brothers we know about are Cain and Abel, and the story of their brotherhood is a tragic one . Then the Torah relates the stories of Abraham and his family, and the first set of brothers we have are Yitshak and YIshmael. Yitzhak carries on the tradition of Abraham, but  Yishmael separates, goes his own way  and forms a separate nation. A similar division takes place between the children of Yitzhak : Yaakov and Esau. Yaakov remains in the framework of holiness, carrying on the tradition of his fathers,  but Esau again goes his own way, and from him comes other nations.  We learn in the Zohar that all the individuals mentioned are, in fact, aspects of the yetzer hatov, the good inclination and the yetzer hara, the evil inclination, as they appear as different elements within our psyche.  Avraham Yitzhak and Yaakov embody elements of the framework of holiness, whereas, Yishmael and Esau represent the framework of evil within us. Now we can see why in each pair of brothers there was distance and separation. The causes of separation between the brothers of each pair are the same issues that we struggle within ourselves: the difference between the desires of the soul, the yetzer hatov which wishes to be in dvekut, unity with God, and the desires of the body, the yetzer hara which wants to receive self-gratification.   But in the family of Jacob, the situation is different. Jacob begets twelve brothers, who become the twelve tribes of Israel; brothers, whose names are destined to be inscribed on the breastplate of the Kohen Gadol, the  high priest in the Temple. All of them are destined to serve God i. So, at a superficial glance, brotherhood should have been straightforward and easy. But, as we find in the parshiot of the Torah that tell of the relationship between Joseph and his brothers, it was anything but. The Kabbalah, as taught by Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag, teaches us, that no light can be attained without the appropriate vessel for it. What is a vessel? A vessel is a desire. Therefore, in order to attain brotherhood, the Children of Israel first had to lose it. Only then would they be able to value brotherhood and desire it, ultimately understanding that brotherhood is a prerequisite for redemption. The issue seems to have been that since the brothers had no role model for brotherhood, they didn’t know they needed it. They were careless of it, and all sides acted in ways that showed it was not something they considered as important. The story of Joseph and the brothers opens with the Joseph acting badly toward the brothers, and they, on their part, hating Joseph. The defining moment when brotherhood is lost, is the selling of Joseph as a slave to Egypt. And then all sides have to live with the dreadful knowledge of where their actions have led . The moment when, convinced of his brothers’ complete Teshuva, repentance, Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers, is seen in the Zohar as a moment of redemption. The vessel for brotherhood had finally been made, and the moment of redemption filled it with light. Finally , the concept of brotherhood widened, not only to relate to the members of one family but to the members of one nation. It was with this brotherhood that the Children of Israel started the exile in Egypt, and it was this they needed to invoke in order to stand at Mount Sinai as “one man with one heart.” We await the time, when all humanity will unite in brotherhood, at the end of the tikkun , “When the glory of God will be revealed and all flesh shall see together that the mouth of God has spoken.” (Isaiah 40:5)  

In Genesis Chapter 12, the Torah relates: “And there was a famine in the land, and Abram descended to Egypt to sojourn there because the famine was severe in the land.” Genesis 12:10 What sort of famine are we talking about? If we take the Torah in its literal sense, then we mean that not enough rain fell or for some other reason the crops did not grow and there was not enough for people to eat. But the sages of the Zohar, understand the famine to have been a famine for the light of God. As the prophet Amos says , “Behold,  there will be days coming says the Lord when I will send a famine in the land, not a famine for bread or a thirst for water , but a famine to hear the words of God.” (Amos  8:11) Abraham is the point of lovingkindness, chesed , within our hearts, this aspect is wanting to give unconditionally. But it has have something to work on. This is what is hinted at in the story. What is Egypt? Egypt is the consciousness of receiving for oneself alone. Egypt symbolizes a consciousness within us which is concerned with receiving everything that God can give, both materially and spiritually only for oneself alone —the height of egoism. However ,the Zohar teaches, that at the time of the sin of Adam, holy sparks fell into the klipot, the shells. In other words, even within the consciousness of our wills to receive ourselves alone, there is a spark of holiness hidden which needs to be rescued from the framework of evil and brought into the framework of holiness. So Abram , which is the point of chesed, of lovingkindness within us sometimes needs to connect with the will to receive for oneself alone, our egoism within us , but not to settle in that consciousness , only to take what we need, which are the desires for the light of God which are exhibited specifically in the will to receive for oneself alone, . Because our service of God needs to be complete with both the vessels of giving and the vessels of receiving . The right-hand line and the left-hand line . Abram is the carrier for the right-hand line the vessels for giving within us . But this visit to the ” other side” requires precautions. Otherwise we can fall into the hands of the Egyptians within us, and these desires of the ego can “kill” our desires of giving unconditionally. What precautions does Avram take and what can we learn from his actions? The answers are found in the podcast. Happy listening! Taken form the Zohar and the writings of Rabbi Avraham Mordechai Gottleib Shlita, of Birkat Shalom This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us.

The story of the two brothers Cain and Abel is written in Genesis. This is what it says: “And Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruits of the land, whereas Able brought from the firstborn of his flock and from their fat. And God paid attention to Abel and to his offering, but to Cain and his offering he paid no attention. “   Genesis chapter 4 And we all know the tragic ending. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag, the great master Kabbalist, relates to the stories in the Torah as depicting elements that are within ourselves. This comes from the fact that every single human being is an entire world in himself or in herself. Therefore everything that is happening outside in the world is also happening within ourselves. The Cain within us is the human intelligence which a person can use in order to try to acquire revelations of the light of God. as Eve said’ With this man I have acquired God, and she called his name Cain, which means acquisition. Cain knows that he can only receive the light of God if he occupies himself by giving, so he humbles himself and offers to God the fruits of the ground , “the ground” representing his outward humility. But he is really deceiving himself, because his desire is really to receive. God pays no heed to this offering . The desire to receive in spirituality is the largest of the desires to receive for ourselves alone. But we also have the element of Abel within us. The word Abel signifies the heart. Abel wants with all his heart to give unconditionally to God even if the offering is small. As we try to give unconditionally we discover our true egoistic nature. So the Abel within us goes in and out of the framework of holiness. Abel is represented by a shepherd, he gathers up his little lambs of faith. As we stumble all we can do is offer our first steps in faith that God will forgive us and help us come toward Him.. This is the offering that God heeds and thus the Abel within us helps us to feel blessed. The Cain within us can never really be happy because it is always looking to see what God owes him for his work, whereas the Able within us is happy and feels privileged , no matter how small the offering is. This podcast is taken from the book HaShem Mamati Shimecha, Vol 3 Pnai Moshe. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us.

The Nature of Creation This last Shabbat we started reading the Torah again from the beginning, starting with the word Bereishit. This word is one of the most discussed words in the Zohar because it contains both the beginning and the ultimate finish of creation.   It contains within itself the sodot, the inner meanings of the origin of creation,   the sodot of the nature of creation, and the sodot of creation’s ultimate destiny. In this short piece let us consider one aspect only:  the word bara ברא that is found within the word bereishit בראשית . The word bara ברא  means creation. Creation implies something new, something that was not present in reality before it came into being. What can that be? The holy Ari teaches us that prior to creation, reality is entirely filled with the limitless light of God, His goodness.  Since this goodness contains all that is, the only new creation that can possibly be, is a state of emptiness. So creation implies emptiness. It describes a state of consciousness in which we are outside of the consciousness of light. It is a state of longing, a state of being incomplete.  If our natural state is one of being filled with light, then the state of creation is therefore an unnatural one. Indeed, this is how we experience it. We all experience periods in our lives of dissatisfaction, of loneliness, of alienation; episodes when we ask, “What is my life about?”  Sometimes these states of consciousness are short-lived, but sometimes these feelings of emptiness and of longing seem to characterize most of our lives. We sometimes try to deny these times, to fill them up with something to distract ourselves from our unease. But this is because we do not realize their potential. By understanding the word bara ברא    we discover that this essential emptiness is actually the essence of creation. We need to harness the power of creation that is inherent in these difficult times. We tend to think that if only the emptiness will be assuaged and fulfilled we will feel satisfaction. But since the moment of Tzimtzum, when the vessel of the Ein Sof, the Infinite, decided it preferred to be a giver rather than a receiver, when it decided it wanted to acquire even more affinity of form with the Creator, our work has changed.  Instead of longing to fill the void by looking for the light, our task is now to change the nature of the vessel itself— to rectify the creation, no less.  When we feel lonely or sad, our job is therefore not to distract ourselves, but to change the desire: Instead of focusing on the emptiness, we work to find fulfilment in another way, through the desire to give to God and to each other in faith.  This corrects creation by changing the direction of desire from that of receiving to a desire of attaining affinity of form, unity, with the Creator.  The Sages of the Zohar assure us that this rectification of Creation will eventually bring the vessel to a higher level of consciousness than it had when it started as a passive receiver in the Ein Sof, eventually attaining conscious partnership with the Creator. So to help us with this rectification of creation , the Creator gave us three more letters  in the word ברא-שית. The word  שית  means six and refers to the six lower Sephirot: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod  which correspond to the six days of creation.   It is in the six days of the week that we are asked to do all our work. This is the work we need do in the world  the rectification of creation. This we do through our fulfillment of the mitzvot of the Torah. The mitzvot  are given to us to teach us how to rectify the creation in practice.  They teach us to refrain from acts that are entirely self –serving; these are the 365 negative mitzvot, the “ don’t do’s, and they show us which actions we can do to perform the 248 positive commands  with love and joy of service.   The Mitzvot therefore give us the means by which we may refrain from indulging in the feelings of sadness and loneliness of unfulfilled desires of receiving, but concentrate instead on our faith in God that He is good and does good and that all that happens is according to His will. And then comes the Shabbat. “Now the heavens and the earth were finished and all their host. And God finished His work  on the seventh day that He did, and He stopped on the seventh day all the work that He did. And God blessed the seventh day and He hallowed it, for on it He ceased all His work that God created to do.” ( Genesis 2:1) So here we have the essence of Shabbat, the fulfilment of Creation, wherein the original thought of creation in which God wants to give joy to the created beings is fulfilled.   Just as the Malchut is the final Sephirah, which comes out following the six Sephirot: Chesed, Gevurah, Tiferet, Netzach, and Yesod, so does the Shabbat whose essence is the Malchut, follow our work of the six days in which we did what we could to correct the desire of receiving to giving. So on the Shabbat, our receiving is only for the sake of giving pleasure to the Creator in joy, in just the same way as it will be in the end of the Tikkun, when we will rest in the fulfillment of the joy and conscious partnership with God on the ultimate seventh day, the Shabbat. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us.

On the night of Shavuot 1948, Rabbi Yehuda Leib Ashlag the great Kabbalist gave this teaching: When we think about the giving of the Torah which took place at Mount Sinai, we’re not talking about a historical event, which took place only at one time and is not taking place now.   But according to the principle that once a spiritual event has happened in spirituality, it is eternal, and all spiritual events that seem to replace it, are in fact only additions to it. So the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai is an eternal event which has never stopped, for God is continually giving. The only changes that occur take place from the side of the receivers . So the fact that we are not receiving the Torah now as we did at Mount Sinai, is not because God is not giving it to us but that we are not at present fit to receive it. HaShem Shamati Shimecha vol. 2 article 86 So we need to examine ,what was the special virtue that the Children of Israel had at the time when they stood at Mount Sinai which enabled them to receive the Torah . What was their  spiritual state and how did they achieve it? We learn from the Scripture: “On the third month following the exodus of the children of Israel from the land of Egypt, on that day, they came to the wilderness of Sinai. They journeyed from  Rephidim and they came to the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. And Israel (in the singular) camped there under the mountain.” Exodus chapter 19 verses1-2) The sages noted that all the verbs in in the sentences describe the Children of Israel in the plural, except for when they encamped at Mount Sinai, There they encamped as one. Rashi, the great commentator on the Torah, quoting the Mechilta, says all their other encampments were with contention and strife, but here they encamped as one man with one heart.  How did they  reach this elevated stage? What changed for them? The Rashi on these verses is illuminating. They journeyed from Rephidim:  Why did [Scripture] have to repeat and explain from where they had journeyed? Did it not already state (Exod. 17:1) that they were encamped in Rephidim? It is known that they journeyed from there. But [it is repeated] here in order to compare their journey from Rephidim to their arrival in the Sinai desert. Just as their arrival in the Sinai desert was with repentance, so was their journey from Rephidim with repentance. — [from Mechilta] Ah, here we are on to something. The journey from Rephidim to Sinai was conducted with repentance. Does the Torah tell us what the Children of Israel were repenting for? The consequence of their repenting was that they became united as one man with one heart. In a state of unconditional giving to each other and with faith in God.  So it is likely that they were in the opposite state when they were in Rephidim.  Let’s take a look at the Scripture, Exodus Chapter 17 there. .The entire community of the Children of Israel journeyed from the desert of Sin, on their travels, by the word of the Lord. They encamped in Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. Exodus 17:1 In other words, this was not a random stumbling across an arid place in the desert. They were deliberately taken there by God. And there is no water. The Scripture continues.  2 So the people quarreled with Moses, and they said, Give us water that we may drink. Moses said to them, Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord? There were many things they could have done. This was the generation that had seen the miracles of God in Egypt , they had seen how they called out to God and He parted the waters of the Red Seat for them. They had faith in God who led them out of Egypt into the wilderness. Why didn’t they do any of those things? The next verse give us a clue.  3 The people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses, and they said, Why have you brought us up from Egypt to make me and my children and my livestock die of thirst? In other words they seemed to have been concerned for themselves alone.  They are talking about me, my children, my livestock. What about the concern for my brother’s children and his livestock? Even though this is the literal sense of the Scripture and there may be other deeper meanings There is a clear hint that here they are operating from their wills to receive for themselves alone. Even if we look at water,  not as physical water, but water as referring to Torah as the Sages of the Talmud and of the Zohar do , nevertheless they are functioning from the will to receive for themselves alone. Following their next question,” Is God in our midst or not?” Amalek attacks Israel and they need to defend themselves. Only when Moses help up his hands in faith did the people prevail. The lesson was learned and the people repented fully. They reached such a degree of self- awareness and responsibility that their Teshuvah (repentance) was so complete, it brought them to the ultimate level of faith and giving. They became united as one, and were in such affinity of form with God, that they could hear His voice deep within themselves and experience His goodness directly as He spoke to them giving the ten commandments on Mount Sinai. In exactly the same way, we also, in the here and now need to experience the eternal voice of God speaking directly to us, as the prophet Jeremiah describes. 32 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD, I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people; 33 and they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying: ‘Know the LORD’; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more. {S} Jeremiah 31: 32-33 Thus the injunction of the Baal Shem Tov, that every person needs to hear the ten commandments everyday, will be fulfilled, when we also will come to be, both within ourselves and with our communities, as one man with one heart. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. Yedidah Cohen is now teaching a new course on the Introduction to the Zohar, by Rabbi Ashlag. The group has already begun, but it is not too late to join. If you are interested, please contact Yedidah through www.nehorapress.com

Seder night is the night in which the greatest light of God, the light of redemption, comes into the world. It is the night in which God delivered the children of Israel from Egypt. And this energy, this great light comes into the world again every year. How will we receive it? How will we relate to it? In this podcast we are going to look at this question in the light of the teachings given by the great Kabbalist of  the 18th Century, Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato, known as the Ramchal. In his work, Derech HaShem the Ramchal writes : On each of the special days that we are commanded to keep as festivals, something happened whereby a great rectification was accomplished, and a great light shone. The highest wisdom decreed that on its anniversary, the counterpart of the original light should shine forth, and the results of its rectification renewed to those who accept it. We have therefore been commanded to observe the Passover with all its rituals to recall the coming out of the Children of Israel from Egypt. At the time of the exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt we experienced an extremely great rectification, and therefore, on the anniversary of this event there shines forth the light that parallels the one that illuminated us then. Derech Hashem section 7 Indeed, the laws and commandments relating to Pesach, as we keep it today, were given to Moses and the Children of Israel while they were still in Egypt. And thus by keeping these mitzvot, we create the correct vessels for receiving the same light today, just as we did then.  One of the main mitzvot on Seder night is telling the story of the great miracle that God wrought for us. And this we do by reciting the Haggadah. This is a compilation of verses put together by the great Sages at the time of the second Temple and they refer both to the events of the Pesach of Egypt and to our own parallel experiences today. This is emphasized by the verse: “ In every generation a person needs to consider himself as if he or she is coming out of Egypt.” The Haggadah begins with: “Ha lachma ania, This is the bread of affliction.” In this paragraph we say “ This year we are slaves, next year we will be free.” So we need to ask ourselves the question, how and in what way are we still slaves now?  How are we are still in our inner Egypt now? In this podcast we delve into the question as to what constitutes our inner Egypt, our inner exile, and we also ask how would we experience redemption? We see how the very same vessels within our personalities that constitute our exile , can on their transformation bring us to our redemption. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. Yedidah Cohen is now teaching a new course on the Introduction to the Zohar, by Rabbi Ashlag. The group has already begun, but it is not too late to join. If you are interested, please contact Yedidah through www.nehorapress.com

Most of us try to push away the dark side of ourselves by denying that it even exists, or we cover it up with fear, shame, and guilt. Feelings that are too painful for us to penetrate. We feel that we are somehow split in two. We often feel that the face we show to the outer world has very little to do with our inner world. When receiving praise or appreciation, we think to ourselves, “if only people really knew what went on in me.” And so we cover it up until sooner or later our darker side comes to the fore again. But in a letter written by Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag we find him taking a very different approach, an approach that I personally found, at first, very surprising, and then, very healing. It’s in this spirit that I want to share this letter with you. The Kabbalah teaches that all the elements of the exodus from Egypt also occur within ourselves. We have within us the Pharoah, who is the darkness within us, and we have the possibility of redemption, which the Passover Haggadah tells us is carried out by none other than God himself who takes us out of our own Egypt. Believing in that possibility is a crucial part of our redemption. We need to know that God, and only God is involved. It was God who put the darkness within us in order to create a need for the help of the Divine. Rabbi Ashlag teaches us that when God tells Moses, “Come to Pharaoh” he’s telling him, “Come to uncover the desire for the holy Shekinah!” And it is that desire that helps us find God within ourselves. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. Yedidah Cohen is now teaching a new course on the Introduction to the Zohar, by Rabbi Ashlag. The group has already begun, but it is not too late to join. If you are interested, please contact Yedidah through www.nehorapress.com

The story of Joseph and his brothers is a story filled with passion, anger and reconciliation. Most of all, it is a story that describes the search for and the development of the quality of brotherhood. Interestingly, although other brothers have been described in the Torah, the quality of brotherhood has not, until now, been one sought for. Ever since Cain and Abel, the most that any pair of brothers has looked for is for the different brothers, Isaac and Ishmael, or Jacob and Esau, to part and go their independent ways in peace. In contrast, all twelve sons of Jacob are called the 12 tribes of Yah. They all follow the path taught by Abraham, developed by Isaac, and brought to fruition by Jacob. Yet, they are twelve distinct individuals who each have their own way of serving God. We can see that from the blessings that Jacob gave each one of them before he died. It seems that it was these differences that were the main cause of contention between them. Joseph’s way of working for God was most suited for the end of the Tikkun, the time of redemption. Indeed his pathway is that of redeemer, as he redeems the land of Egypt and Canaan from the terrible scourge of famine. Judah, in contrast , believes that faith and prayer is the right way to serve God. They could not agree. In the search for brotherhood, the brothers first have to develop the vessel for the light of brotherhood, that is, they have to develop the lack and the need in their awareness for brotherhood. This certainly occurred as a consequence of selling Joseph as a slave in Egypt. The Zohar tells us that fascinatingly enough the holy Shechinah, the Divine presence, agreed with this act!? Maybe it was because, as Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag teaches, no light may be attained unless there is the appropriate vessel for it. So in order for the light of brotherhood to be attained, first the vessel needs to be created. Ultimately, all Israel needed to develop the quality of brotherhood between, not only all the members of one family, but between all the members of one nation, until we could all come to stand at Mount Sinai, to receive the Torah ” as one man with one heart.” Rabbi Ashlag, in his great work, Matan Torah, teaches that the complete fulfillment of the Torah both then and now, is the same requirement. Of coming together as “one man with one heart.” This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. Yedidah Cohen is now teaching a new course on the Introduction to the Zohar, by Rabbi Ashlag. The group has already begun, but it is not too late to join. If you are interested, please contact Yedidah through www.nehorapress.com

Why is it important for ourselves to know what we are made of? What we really are?  Can such knowledge help us live our lives in an authentic way, and not just live our lives on a superficial level? The truth is, if we don’t know which aspects of ourselves are positive, supportive to our path, and helping us to fulfill our potential, or conversely, which are holding us back and are self-destructive, we cannot know what parts of ourselves to place our focus on. Even more important, we cannot recognize our true worth and fulfill our ultimate potential if we remain ignorant of what we really are. Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag, wrote an essay on this very question, ” What is our essence?” as his introduction to the Zohar the central text of Kabbalah. At first sight, this seems strange. The content of the Zohar deals with the intentions of our forefathers and foremothers; the reasons for the mitzvot; and the dynamics of light and vessel. These topics are described in the Perush haSulam in a complex language of root and branch, the language of Kabbalah, the language of Sephirot and Partzufim, as taught by the Holy Ari. As an introduction to the Zohar, we might therefore have expected Rabbi Ashlag to have concentrated on these elements. To our surprise, however, he focuses on this one question, “What is our essence?” By doing so, Rabbi Ashlag is teaching us that the question, “What is our essence” is actually the focus of the Zohar itself! Through the details of the inner wisdom of Kabbalah, the Zohar is teaching us what our own nature consists of. And it is in this context that it shows us our purpose in life, demonstrates the correct relationship between ourselves and God and teaches us how to serve our Creator. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. The inspiration for this podcast came from the students who are learning A Tapestry for the Soul: the Introduction to the Zohar by Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag with me. If you would like to join the group learning, please contact me, Yedidah Cohen, through the website on www.nehorapress.com The picture is “One Together” by David Friedman of Tsfat . His work may be seen at https://www.kosmic-kabbalah.com/

Many people contact me and ask me if Judaism has a spiritual path. What they have in mind is the connection with the soul. The spiritual wares of other religions, for example, Zen or Tibetan  Buddhism, Hindu Yoga, or Sufism from the Islam tradition seem somehow to be more accessible than is the Jewish path.  These paths advocate meditation, ascetic practices, or other techniques designed to bring a person into awareness of his own selfishness and of his ego and to come into contact with the Divine part of his or herself the soul. Since these paths opened up to the West,  we find many Jews who are drawn to these spiritual paths. The fact remains that Jews are by nature a deeply spiritual people. And ultimately they are not completely comfortable with the materialism of the Western rationalist culture.  So we need to ask the question Where is Judaism’s spiritual path? Why is it so much more difficult for Jews to access their own path? Indeed, I was brought up in an Orthodox Jewish home in London. We kept all the customs and the rituals of Orthodox Judaism yet I also found myself asking this question. I, personally, never really doubted that Judaism has a spiritual path because I understood for myself that it would not have been possible for the Jewish people to have survived 2000 years of persecution and dispersion without one. Not only that, but in my view, it had to be a very profound spiritual path, because Jews throughout history, whether formally religious or not, were nevertheless, when in dire circumstances, willing to die for their faith rather than give up who they were. We could not have had this dedication to our faith if it had been based purely on social content, customs, or rituals alone. It definitely had to have a deep spiritual content. So my question became not “Does Judaism have a spiritual path? but what is Judaism’s spiritual path?” The answer to this question lies in the unique inclusiveness of Judaism’s spirituality: In other religions, there is a separation between the physical world and the spiritual world. People who wish to dedicate their lives to spirituality live separately from the physical world, as ascetics, hermits, or monks. But Judaism sees the world as a whole. It sees the physical dimension of the world, its physical dimension as being, in itself, spiritual. Life itself is sacred in all its manifestations and it is through life itself that God communicates with us. So how does Judaism’s spiritual path work? The Kabbalah teaches us that every element in this physical world comes directly from the spiritual worlds above. Not only that but our actions and words in this world affect the functioning of the spiritual worlds. So there are invisible but real threads connecting us to the spiritual worlds. Where are these spiritual worlds to be found? Both surrounding us, and within us. Deep within our own soul. The Torah is the bridge between the physical and the spiritual and all aspects of it are needed, the written, and revealed Torah and the oral tradition, the Halachah and the Kabbalah. All elements need to unite to give us the whole spritual path, , the inclusive spiritual path that is the heritage of every Jew. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui Nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotler z”l, May their memories be a blessing for us.

Drawn to the study of Kabbalah from a very early age, Rabbi Ashlag understood the Kabbalah’s unique integrating function of heart and mind, of feeling and thought, of faith and of service to God.  He penetrated the technicalities of the Torah of the Ari, showing that the Sephirot and their pathways are simply the pathways of love between God and ourselves. Kabbalah is a part of the oral tradition, the Torah shel baal peh, and was always a part of the whole Torah. Thus our greatest sages were also Kabbalists. Rabbi Ashlag was one such a great sage his work in opening up Kabbalah was welcomed by the other great sages of his generation: Rabbi Avraham Yizhak HaCohen Kook, the Sage of Gur, Rabbi Dessler, and others. Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag (1886-1954) lived in an age in which the Kabbalah had become forgotten or frowned upon in the Ashkenazi Jewish world, and furthermore he saw that the increasing materialism and secularisation in the world did not pass Jews by and many were being lost to assimilation. Receiving permission from his teachers and with an inner knowing that the time was right, he opened up Kabbalah to those who wish to study it, bringing a new flowering and vitality to his generation and to ours… the generation for whom the redemption is very close. Rabbi Ashlag’s Yahrzeit falls on the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur. It is in this 66th year since he died that three new books have been translated of his work into English, so in this podcast I have tried to express something of what I feel his great contribution to Jewish thought and practice of our time has been. For me, it is his demonstration that at the core of Judaism lies the love between the Creator and ourselves and the love we are able to give back to the Creator and to each other. This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui Nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon Kotler z”l and Sara Kotlerz”l, May their memories be a blessing for us. Note: In this talk, the importance of the connection between the practice of Torah and mitzvot and the study of the Kabbalah is emphasized. I would like to add that if we are secular or not Jewish this still applies to us: The seven mitzvot of the children of Noah apply to everyone and we can all work on “Love your neighbor as yourself”. May you all be blessed with a sweet New Year and a perfect sealing in the Book of Life. Yedidah

When we visit Jerusalem today, we see a thriving city, one of the most beautiful in the world: bustling and busy, filled with people, old and young, living their lives. So what does it mean for us today to sit on the floor on the ninth day of Av and mourn the destruction of the Temple and the devastation of Jerusalem?? Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag, the great Kabbalist, looks at the cause of the destruction from the perspective of the devastation of the sanctuary within ourselves. The sanctuary within is our inner Jerusalem, our inner temple. It is here that the revelation of the light of God needs to be shining, but it is dimmed. We live our lives without the conscious connection with the Creator and we think it’s normal. But the truth of the matter is that it is not normal. The destruction and the dispersion over the generations have left us empty of that living connection with God. In particular, in the last hundred years with increasing materialism, we’ve lost that live connection through our mind and heart. And our soul, the Shechinah, is in the dust.It is for this that we mourn on Tisha B’Av. The lack of God in our lives leaves us with a terrible void which we try to cover up with substitutes: culture, economics politics… but nothing ultimately can comfort us for our aloneness. Truly Jeremiah spoke, when he mourns, “How does the city sit alone? She that was filled with people is like a lonely widow.” For we, inside of ourselves, are like the widow left by her Husband. It is this lack of conscious connection with the Creator that constitutes the true reason to mourn on Tisha B’Av. First of all for ourselves as individuals, and then for our people, and finally for all humanity. We are all in the same boat together, and our mourning ultimately encompasses us all. This talk is taken from a transcription of a talk given by Rabbi Avraham Mordecai Gottleib Shlitah, Head of the Beit Midrash, Bircat Shalom, Telzstone and translated by Yedidah Cohen This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui Nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon and Sara Kotler, May their memories be a blessing for us.

Our world, both politically and culturally, is in turmoil. Our value systems are being turned upside down. Freedom of speech in the West is no longer guaranteed. Our economic systems serve only a few with the majority suffering under huge burdens. And, in more than one country, democracy itself and the freedom of the individual are under attack. All this was true before, but now added to that are the Coronavirus crisis and the latest riots in the US and the world. Where are we heading? Times of chaos are definitely uncomfortable for us: and we are the individuals who are destined to live through them. But such times also provide opportunities for us to reassess our values and to make new decisions in the directions that we, as individuals, as families, and as communities want to go in. The truth that Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag, the great 20th century Kabbalist, pointed out in his writings is the fact that just as we need to obey the laws of gravity in this physical world, so there are natural spiritual laws that we also need to obey if we don’t wish to suffer the consequences. For the longest time, humanity has been heedlessly consuming satisfying its self- gratification with no or little thought for the ethical constraints we all need to take heed of. We have allowed our appetites for power, greed, and entertainment to take control of our political, cultural and economic systems until we no longer know how to put checks on them and they have turned into monsters controlling us. Our basic nature, which is our will to receive pleasure comes to us from the Creator at the very act of creation. However, if we use this will to receive pleasure in its primal fashion we separate from God. o prevent that and to convert our limited vessels for selfish pleasure into unlimited channels of goodness for all humankind we are obliged to transform our desires to receive pleasure into the will to give unconditionally. But since such a transformation goes against our basic nature it isn’t easy for us to see how we may do that. The Torah, the divine wisdom that God gave all humanity through the Jewish people, constitute just the wisdom we need. And indeed its wisdom was never needed more than at this time. All the excerpts in this podcast from RabbiAshlag’s writings were taken from original translations of his texts as published in: In the Shadow of the Ladder: the Introductions to Kabbalah by Rabbi Yehudah Lev Ashlag, translated by Mark and Yedidah Cohen A Tapestry for the Soul: The Introduction to the Zohar explained through excerpts collated from Rabbi Ashlag’s other writings, by Yedidah Cohen The Master of the Ladder: The Life and Teachings of Rabbi Yehudah Leib Ashlag by Rabbi Avraham Mordecai Gottlieb, translated by Yedidah Cohen This podcast is dedicated in loving memory and for the ilui Nishmat of Feigi Bat Rivka z”l and Aharon and Sara Kotler, May their memories be a blessing for us.