Zot chukat ha Torah

My good friend Rabbi Naphtali Buchwald of the Houston Kollel shares a one-minute Dvar Torah every Friday afternoon. Last week, he started as follows: "Zois chukas ha Toirah," (quoted in his pronunciation). The Torah seems to promise us an earth-shattering lesson but continues with the specific laws of purifying oneself from the impurity of the dead.

So it seems we don't get the promised earth-shattering lesson. But actually, we do. Look in the Zohar, the beginning of the same Torah portion Chukat.

Rabbi Yose starts by praising the words of the Torah, which are sweeter than honey, to those who study it. Then he asks why here it says "Zot chukat ha Torah" but elsewhere it starts with a vav, "V'zot ha Torah asher sam Moshe..."

Vav is the hint to Zeir Anpin and its inseparable connection to the Malchut (zot), or Knesset Israel. What is needed to make this happen? - Go and learn the Metok Midvash commentary.

Art: Woman Milking a Red Cow by Karel Dujardin

Balak – The son of a bird

“And Balak saw all that Israel had done...” – what did he see? Balak was a wizard who saw things, just as Avimelech was able to see what happened inside the house of Isaac. The fact that Abimelech looked “through the window” is impossible – did Isaac “enjoy with his wife” during the day? And with open windows?” – Rather, this “window” is a name of wizardry. Balak used the same.

Balak is called the son of a bird because he had this magic bird with iron wings who would fly around the world and tell him the news. He got this news from Aza, one of the two fallen angels. However, this time, the bird was late in coming back, and when it did come, it had its tail singed with fire. It also argued with Balak. He would say, “a certain people came out of Egypt,” and it corrected, “They are called Israel, which means “Isra El,” prince of God. He said "big," and the bird corrected him "great." That is what made Balak and his nation very much afraid.

Art: Open Window Lilacs Study by Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov

Chukat – What does the letter “vav” mean

And (“vav”) this is the law of the Torah – to burn the red heifer.

To explain this, Rabbi Yose started by praising the words of the Torah and those who study them. Then, Moses said, “Today, you are becoming a nation since you have the Torah.” But really, the Torah was given forty years ago; what did Moses mean? – Rather, this teaches that the Torah is beloved to those who learn it, every day just as the first time.

Now he could continue: the letter “vav,” which means “and,” joins subjects together: the Torah, which is symbolic of the community of Israel, and the Holy One Blessed be He, which usually denotes the Zeir Anpin, the “Supreme Man,” or the communication between God and this world. These are all united with the letter “vav.”

Those who read the daily prayers remember one of the phrases in the beginning, “All and some detail and then all again – the last 'all' includes only those things that were mentioned in detail.” That is a rule of the understanding the Torah, but it is also a means of connecting the Knesset Israel and God – since Malchut (or Shekhinah, God's presence) is called “All,” and Beauty is called “detail,” since it “details” the six directions of Zeir Anpin. Thus one does not exist without the other, and the other does not exist without the first.

Art: Rabbinical Students In A Classroom by Edouard Brandon

Naso – What happens at night

"God spoke to Moses, saying: 'Also take a census (raise their heads) of Gershon's descendants by families...'"

To explain this, Rabbi Abba quoted, "Happy is the man for whom God does not account his wrongdoings, and whose soul is pure" - and said that it does not make sense. If God does not count his wrongdoings, then they must exist. If so, why is his soul pure?

However, he explained that the world experiences judgment in the afternoon, which continues into the evening. The man's soul goes up and, free from the body's restrictions, testifies about his actions during that day. At midnight the righteous praise God and study Torah, and cause joy to the spiritual beings. Meanwhile, the soul that testifies retells man's words spoken during that day, and if they were only good and if he said nothing wrong about his fellows that he was not permitted to say, then his soul is pure. So now we understand that when is it that "God does not account his wrongdoings?" – When his soul is pure because he does not recount the wrongdoings of others.

Now here is what God said to Moses: Raise the righteous in the spiritual world where they cause joy, called 'head,' for the service that they do in Dispersion (Gershon is a hint to this since that word means 'I am a stranger here.')

Art: Procession of Souls By Louis Welden Hawkins

Bamidbar – Why count the community of Israel?

“God spoke to Moses in the Sinai Desert, in the Communion Tent...saying 'Take a census of the entire community of Israel.'”

To explain this, the Zohar goes all the way back to God creating a man and a woman, the man violating the first commandment, and how the rectification of his act was started with Adam's son, then continuing with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and still not be completed until the descendants of the twelve tribes accepted the Torah. It was not completed until the building of the Communion Tent, with its most important part – the Ark, containing the Tablets.

The actual means of correction was God's love to Israel, exhibited through counting the community three times. This counting served to bind their souls to the spiritual worlds above and correct both the souls and the worlds. Thus the words “in the Sinai Desert" and "in the Communion Tent,” which seem to be redundant, in reality, denote different worlds – giving Israel connection to both the theory and the practice of the Divine love.

Art: Adam and Eve Mourning for Abel By Johann Liss

After finishing one’s prayer

After one finishes his prayer with the goodwill from his Master (that is, after one says, “May it be Your goodwill to accept it”), one needs to imagine that he is giving up his life, with perfect love – and that is called “Tachanun”, or “Supplication.”

Once he does this, he is forgiven all the mistakes he had made, and if he did things that are not befitting a Jew, and did them in public – which amounts to the profanation of the Name of God – even that is forgiven. That is why initially it was called “Falling on one’s face on the ground” – because ground and land are connected to Rulership, the lowest spiritual level, from which there is no way but up.

He thus falls into the kingdom of Evil, with the goal of finding the small particles of goodness there, to bring them up when he straightens. He then goes together with them to the level of Rulership again, but this time in the highest world of Nearness.

The source for this is the Zohar at the top of

this post. But how exactly does one imagine it? By giving up his life in four different ways, corresponding to the four methods of capital punishment as they existed when there was such thing as Jewish capital punishment, with Sanhedrin. This is explained in the second picture in this post, from the Siddur HaRashash by Rabbi Asher Anshil Braun.

Korach - Argument Between Heaven and Earth

“Korach had a confrontation with Moses“

To understand the argument between Korach and Aaron, we need to go back to the creation of the world. God created the sky, to separate between “Upper Waters” and “Lower Waters.”  The first represents Mercy, which the second – Judgment. Mercy wanted to justify everyone, even the bad. Strictness wanted to judge everyone, even the good, and be as exacting with them as a hair's breadth. God created a “firmament,” or the sky, to separate and to reason. The sky represents Beauty, the quality of proportionality and balance.

Shakespeare hints at this argument in his sonnet, “Mine eye and heart are at a mortal war.”  There, the heart represents Mercy, and is connected to Wisdom. Eye, on the other hand, represents Judgment, connected to Understanding. The argument is decided by “a quest of thoughts, all tenants to the heart.” It would seem unfair, at first glance, that the mediator would live in the quarters of one of the contestants. However, Mercy must be superior to Judgment, for them to function well together.

As a result, Judgment agrees to spare the righteous, while Mercy has to give the bad ones over to punishment – on the condition, however, that it serves as correction. In the course of the disagreement, Judgment gets argumentative and angry, which manifests in the creation of the Gehinnom.

Korach represented argumentative Judgment, while Aharon, who never said a bad word to anybody, represented Mercy. Moses, who saw them argue, immediately recognized this as the argument that had already happened at the creation time, and decide to intervene, since he represented balance and Beauty, as his mother saw when he was born, “the boy was good,” meaning, “completely good, beautiful and balanced.”

However, it all depends on how people argue. If they are at war with each other, in order to find the higher truth, then they will see it, when it presents itself in the words of their counterpart. Such were the arguments between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, who respected each other, studied the other's point of view, and were at times convinced. Korach was not a perfect reflection of Judgment, but was in it for his own honor, and he did not heed to Moses at all. That is why he had to fall into that same Gehinnom that was created by Judgment. Still, there was some good intention on his part also, and he has a corresponding place in the Future World.

Art: François Brunery - A Delicate Balance

There Is No Contradiction Between Multiple Opinions

There is no place in the laws of the Torah for a contradiction; when some Sages hold one opinion, and others hold a different one, all of these explanations flow and end up on one place, called “Kingship,” or better yet, “Qeeenship,” which is another name for the Oral Torah. Not only these opinions end up in one place, but they also originate in one source – the Foundation of the Cosmic Man, also called Zeir Anpin. What, then, is the reason for the disagreements? When an opinion comes out from the Foundation, it may lean more to the right, Kindness, or to the left, Strictness, but it invariably comes back to the same Kinghsip. Thus we have the rule about the disagreements of the early Sages that “Those and these are the words of the living God.” That is the meaning of King Solomon's, “All rivers go to one sea, all go to one place.”

If the secrets of the Torah are its inner essence and if they illuminate the other areas of learning, then why is the study of them not widespread? Rabbi Shimon explained it with this phrase of the Torah: “God formed every wild beast and every bird out of the ground... every living soul... but the man did not find a helper.” The wild beasts and birds symbolize people without knowledge. Since they lack understanding, they are no help for a man. Even those who are called “living soul” and who study the Law, they, too, are of no help for man in exile if they do not investigate the reasons and are not seeking for the secrets in their learning.

Art: Eva Gonzales - Secretly

The Mystical Meaning Of Sacrifices – They Tie The Room Together!

“God said to Noah, 'The end of all flesh has come before Me...'”

What does this phrase mean? – “End of all flesh” is the name of a spiritual entity that came before God. It is also called “The Other Side,” or “Sitra Achra,” because it has the permission to pretend that it acts independently of God.

It is called “End of all flesh” because it desires to literally “End all flesh,” that is, to entice a human into worthless pursuits, until death. However, it desires the meat of the sacrifices as well. In that case, it enjoys seeing the destruction of the flesh of the sacrifices. In fact, the physical part of the sacrifices is indeed brought for its sake, whereas the spiritual part is for the sake of man and God.

However, even when the “Other Side,” or “End of all flesh” achieves its goal, and sees the death and rotting of a person – which is analogous to burning of sacrifices – it is only given control over the body, but the soul returns to Gan Eden, where it originally came from. Back to sacrifices, the desire and intention of the one who brings them are the spiritual element of the sacrifices, and, similar to the soul of a human, his intentions ascend to Heaven and tie all spiritual worlds together.

When a righteous person dies, his death is analogous to a sacrifice, and serves to elevate and achieve forgiveness for the world. The Other Side enjoys his body, and through this present it is bribed and has no more power to accuse the World. His soul, through its elevation, brings benefits to all the spiritual worlds. Each level of his souls is use to uplift the corresponding spiritual world, and in this way the righteous is a complete perfect sacrifice.

Another person, who is not worthy, and is not fitting to be a sacrifice – his body also goes to the grave and is given to the Other Side, but his soul does not ascend, and higher levels of the souls – he does not even posses them. He is analogous to a blemished sacrifice, which is not desired even if brought. Thus, the righteous atone for and improve the world, and are an atonement sacrifice for the world.

Art: Anne-Francois-Louis Janmot - On the Mountain - The Poem of the Soul

So who wrote the Zohar?

There are unusual references in the Zohar to Sages who came much later than Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. There are mentions of Rabbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish, who lived a few hundred years later, and even to the Sages called Geonim (geniuses) who lived almost a thousand year after Rabbi Shimon.

Here are some explanations that I've read at 5:30 AM, a very right time for such things, waiting to board the plane back to Houston.

After Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and his students died and entered Gan Eden, they kept a running commentary on the Zohar, adding to it as they saw fit. The book was in the possession of a few select Sages, but they kept discovering new things in it. This is no doubt real magic, but why this should not be the case, since they were all wizards during their lifetimes? (Mikdash Melech)

Rabbi Shimon kept revealing secrets to his students after his death. That is the “later composition” as opposed to “first composition” mentioned in the Zohar. The parts about the later Sages were added when these Sages were already living (Sichot HaRan, Rabbi Nachman of Breslov).

Rabbi Abba, who was tasked by Rabbi Shimon with writing down the teaching, lived for 300 years. He transmitted the book to Rav, when Rav traveled to Babylon, where he revealed it to select Sages, and later it came into the hands of the Geonim. They kept adding commentaries into the text, because the nature of the teaching is that it is a living book (some find problems with this explanation, because of the lack of attributions).

The complete Zohar was authored by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, no excuses, but he knew the future and wrote the teaching of the Sages who were to come later. For Rabbi Shimon, there was no difference between the past and the future, and he quoted from both (Rabbi Chaim Vital). (My commentary: it was important for the book to be hidden all this time, because it should not exert undue influence on future events that are described in it.)

These explanation are from the book “Shaarei Zohar” by Rabbi Daniel Frisch, who in his translation of the Zohar called “Matok MiDvash” (Sweeter Than Honey) prefers the practical explanation, and marks stories from later time (such as those of Rabba bar bar Channah) as external additons.

Art: Louis Charles Moeller - Stubborn

Pinchas – Jealousy

As learned earlier, the word Jealousy appears three times in the introductory verse of the Pinchas Torah portion, and there is a meditation from Baal Shem Tov, closely connected to the name of God “Jealous”. In principle, it works like this.

It is known that Evil exists only in the lower spiritual worlds, but that in the upper one, called Atzilut, or the World of Nearness, all is Good. By taking the subject of prayer and lifting oneself together with it into the World of Nearness, one comes to the state where Good and Bad are indistinguishable, because the Bad there is also Good. Then on his spiritual descent into the physical world, one finds that the necessary changes have been accomplished.

Even the meditation itself, without the use of a mikvah, is beneficial to the person, and even without accomplishing any other results. Some say, even no meditation is beneficial.

Art: Claude Oscar Monet - Meditation - Madame Monet On The Sofa

Shlach – It was the season when the first grapes begin to ripen

“God spoke to Moses, saying, 'Send out men for yourself to explore the Canaanite territory that I am about to give the Israelites.' ... It was the season when the first grapes begin to ripen.”

Why did the Torah say, “And those days were the days when grapes begin to ripen?” Why “those days were the days?” The answer is that the words “those days” refer to the special days that we already know about, the six days that correspond to the six directions in the spiritual image of Zeir Anpin, the Cosmic Man, or in some sense the Humanity. When he has only six spiritual components, the days of his youth and immaturity, without the influence of the intellect, he will receive from the Supernal Father and Mother.

All the six days and the six directions were mixed in the Tree of Knowledge, with which Adam made his mistake, and this accords well with the opinion that this tree was the vine. Wine is connected to Rulership, and it was also there that Adam made his mistake – by his attempt to fix it and take its first fruit before the proper time.

Sources: Rabbi Daniel Frisch, Moshe Cordovero, Mikdash Melech, other commentators.

When the spies tried to pick up a cluster of grapes, the cluster, sensing their bad intentions, refused to be picked up. The spies then asked Joshua and Caleb to lift the cluster, which they were able to do. Being upset, the spies decided to kill Joshua and Caleb. Joshua spoke to the cluster and told it, "If you are the cause of our death, we will not inherit the portion of the land in which you grew." The cluster then relented and allowed itself to be carried by the other spies.

Source: Meam Lo'ez.

Art: Raphaelle Peale - Still Life With Grapes And Dish

Behaalotcha - When You Come to Light up the Lights

God spoke to Moses, telling him to speak to Aaron and say to him, 'When you light the lamps, the seven lamps shall illuminate the menorah.'

To explain this, Rabbi Yehudah quoted from the Psalms, “Mighty sun is like a bridegroom coming out of his marriage canopy,” and to explain this in turn, he said, “Happy are those who learn the Torah of God, which is the Tree of Life.” One who grabs it inherits this world and the World to Come. To grab it and go higher on it, one needs to learn it and constantly meditate and repeat it to remember – because this is called “grabbing.” The gematria of “The Tree of Life” is 233, and this is the same gematria as “Remember.”

Now, the Tree of Life is the Spiritual Man, Zeir Anpin, who inherits his mind from Supernal Father and Supernal Mother, and he transmits this light to the whole creation below, and that is the mighty sun which sends his light to his queen, the Female, Nukva, and in doing so illuminates everything. Through their contact, they light the lights of the Female or the Rulership, and that is the meaning of "When you come to light up the lights."

That, in turn, is compared to the Torah, which is called “Beauty” - because beauty is ideal proportions and perfect balance. In spiritual words, it is achieved by studying the opposing tendencies of Kindness and Judgment and by finding a new entity, Beauty, where both Kindness and Judgment are equally balanced.

Art: Winslow Homer - Sunlight And Shadow Oil Painting